I decided to come back to my wizard playthrough which I left 1 year ago. It was a tough choice: I risked not being able to "get into" the ongoing story but I still preferred that instead of starting over with another character. At the end of chapter 3, I actually started realizing what the main plot was about.
Getting back turned out to be fun so far. I think I found some balance in my party and their spells/abilities.
Right now, it shows I have 150 hours in the game. This is how much time it took for the game to start "clicking" for me. I usually don't give up on games easily and P:K seems to follow the route of PoE for me where I found a way to enjoy the game many, many hours into it after a few failed attempts. I think understanding the complex combat system and other complex things such as managing your logistics/travelling helped.
So I completed the Vordakai's Tomb. It was the first full chapter I saw after returning to the game, the first full new content for me. And let me tell you: THIS WAS FUN. The dungeon is nicely done, the whole quest is intriguing and pumping your interest up with every twist. And the fights, I LOVED them. They are hard fights, with lots of enemies, different enemies using different things. It was so cool to find ways to overcome them, it was the first place in the game where I actually used precious raise dead scrolls.
- The fight against the whole barbarian camp with 18 (!) enemies surrounding the party with no prebuffing. Made me cast ALL our AoE spells to cover more ground than is shown on my 2k monitor. So many graphics flying around: webs, clouds, storms, etc etc.
- The fight against 40+ zombies. Even PoE with its MANY undead couldn't really reproduce that feeling of a zombie horde.
- The fight against a wizard and his undead army. In the first real "wizard" fight, it was a joy to find a way to go through his protections and not being overwhelmed by the undead.
- The fight against 4 daemons.
- The fight against 5 ancient elementals.
- The fight against golems.
- The fight against Ferocious Soul Eaters. How creative that has been!
- And the final chapter fight, obviously. I didn't rest just before the final chamber - and after the fight, I hardly had any spells left on my characters. I like how with lvls 11-12 for my party, Evocation spells get their power and slowly become useful.
All those enemies which drain your stats. The different challenges in nearly every fight. The fresh experience in every fight. It was especially cool that I didn't have to tweak my spell selection when I came to this dungeon. I didn't spoil myself and didn't read any tips. I might have missed some content not having Tristian in the party but I decided to play with the setup I've got used to and the setup I've been liking.
My party:
2 tanks - Valerie (obviously), Okbo (0.5 tank) and Harrim (0.5 tank, switching to melee when I need his tanking)
3 DPS - Ekundayo (obviously), Jaethal, Octavia (her "trickster" additions to spells and sneak attacks in general, plus the favourite (now) school of Evocation, Conjurations summons
C/C - Conjuration wizard (the main character), Octavia with her Transmutation spells
Support - Harrim, Jaethal, Octavia
This combination of interchangeable roles allows me to have different sources of poison/decease/blindness/elemental/alignment/death protection. Now after I've completed the dungeon, I found this good guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/ht3hfs/a_nice_little_guide_to_vordakais_tomb/ - the majority of tips I see there I have been actually using myself. I'm playing on Normal settings for everything (1.0 damage, Death's door status) with RtwP (I think the game is designed for this mode, not TB).
I also have to add, the rewards for this quest were substantial: lots of good loot in the dungeon (it's very important for the player to find all those items for "wow" moments), and the kingdom bonuses.
Agreed, the Vordakai section is one of the highlights of the game, arguably one of its best dungeon sections. And has a real throwback kind of feel to dungeon crawler RPG's of old.
What's amusing is that Vordakai's Tomb is also one of the areas that some people complain about the most . It's a big spike in difficulty, there are some new types of opponents that drain stats, and there's no backing out.
I'm with you guys, I love it, one of the most fun areas. Also just about exactly the right length - you feel drained and exhausted by the end of it, but not bored or tedious. It feels so satisfying when you walk out of that dungeon...and straight into the next act, there's no let up now, you're in one of the crunch points of the plot!
I agree, Vordekai's Tomb was actually one of the few locations that impressed me in P:K and was clearly not copy/pasted like many others. It was really fun and challenging too.
I liked (but did not love) Vordekai's Tomb. Comparing it against the other major set piece dungeons in the game, it's probably the best (Better than Trobold, and the Womb. Much (much, much) better than the last dungeon as well. The next act's dungeon isnt bad either, although I think considerably less compelling.
Not a big update from me, but I finished the main quests of chapter 4, now I'm taking my time (finally) just exploring all the maps without any rush (as there doesn't seem to be any timer for the next quest). I know logistics management is not for everyone, but it makes the game stand out from others. I almost miss those "You have 30 days or you'll lose the game" notifications now - as now I seem to have weeks or even months to complete stuff. It took some time to adjust and to get used to - the game wasn't good at explaining: "Do the main content first, manage your kingdom later" - but now I understand. It's great to catch up on companion's quests which explain their personality.
And of course, the main story is now interesting and the lady antagonist is intriguing. I wish the story didn't wait 60 hours until it finally grabbed me.
I liked the next act's dungeon as well, but it was shorter. The final battle (Armag) was more difficult than even Vordekai himself - but I liked it of course. Finally got access to lvl 7 spells, having fun with game systems. I have started to use rods and metamagic - and it makes the player's possibilities so varied. That is some big compliment - but I would say that the combat system of P:K is more interesting and varied than original BG games... More classes, more meaningful choices with every level up, more varied spells, metamagic, rods, many more suffixes for items. Overall, I would say that today's games such as P:K, PoE and DOS definitely move the genre forward. The only thing I miss is the "magic chess" battles similar to the SCS mod.
I'm still continuing, and it's still SO FUN. The chapter with the war against Irovetti has been confusing a bit at the start, with so many negative problems for the kingdom and lots of travelling back and forth between Pitax and my capital, but I've already got used to this pace: there was a period of almost a year of tranquillity to do side-quests, so I embraced the urgentness.
I'm finding more and more pieces of information about the main plot and it intrigues me with each new event. I salute the game for
Apparently allowing me to romance the (so far) main antagonist!!!
While travelling around, I stumbled across a dragon lair. I was waiting so much for a challenging fight, and I got it! I went in blind and didn't even know what kind of dragon it would be. Turned out to be a Black Dragon, so it was bad news for my party which concentrates on Acid spells. We still won from the first attempt, because we used all sorts of scrolls and wands, including Valerie (I was putting points into magic device using for her). Screenshots from the fight:
And oh my! The rewards for the fight were excellent!
P:K won me over and I can definitely recommend it:
- to everyone who has been on the fence regarding the game, the free weekend is probably the best chance to try & see for yourself
- you get more than 2 hours (a refund period)
- just don't go in thinking it's "a new BG", or a game similar to BG
- think about it as an RPG with complex systems, an isometric view, close to the DnD rules (the Pathfinder rules if you're familiar with them) - but built around the kingdom management
- the kingdom management is an essential part of this game and is quite fun, I would recommend against turning it off (making it automatic)
- accept that the game has a strategy element in it, - I mean not combat strategy here, - but map strategy, where and when you travel
- start slow, experiment, try to understand every new spell you come across, or every new feat you can pick
- reload when you need, try again, reload - to be able to understand what the game wants from you
- google your questions or ask freely
- think about the character class you gravitate towards, and go with it - but don't experiment much with multiclassing on your first attempts - it can backfire
- if you're starting to feel that you want another class, restart as a new character - the game is very long, and the sooner you get "your" character, the better, it would be difficult to go through a 150-hour adventure with a class you're not much fond of
- once you get your kingdom, ALWAYS complete the MAIN quest first, side quests later, or your kingdom will be in a danger and you won't feel safe
- always use mid/long term buffs, rest a lot - basically, rest before starting exploring every new area, the game is designed the way you should enter fights buffed; don't be afraid to rest, including when travelling on the map
If I used this mindset back when I started playing the game, it would have changed everything completely for me.
I personally play on a custom difficulty with everything set to 1:1 (in terms of the party's damage vs enemy's damage), which is a modified Normal setting. I also play with RtwP and haven't tried a TB mode - I didn't need it even in the hardest of fights.
All very well said, I especially think your point about quest priorities should be emphasized. Do the mainline quests as soon as possible. Then prioritize companion quests. Then do any sidequests available in your chapter and/or random exploration. Once you've completed all those things, then it's the best time to do kingdom management stuff that involves eating up time -- i.e. leveling up advisors. There is some balance needed here, you shouldn't stray out of the kingdom for so long that kingdom events expire without you assigning an advisor. Part of the game's wonderful strategy imo.
A second thing is your point on buffs. A definite yes to this, many, many of the 10 minutes per level, 1 hour per level buffs are absolutely excellent and the best use of your spell slots in many cases. And the game is very much designed for areas with multiple fights expecting you to buff up your party a bunch and then efficiently run down mob after mob.
A third point I'd add on to this, if you're finding combat challenging but don't want to turn difficulty down, is a general strategy. Summons + relying on ranged with your party members + AoE disabling spells like Grease or Web or others. On its base difficulty settings, the game can be punishing to melee NPC's. You really only want to roll with the one or two or three (in the case of your own) best tanky NPC's, and have everyone else be ranged. The OP combat strategy very much resembles BG1, generally. Even on top of this, animal companions are also very strong, because they are somewhat immune to the permadeath mechanic. Many subclasses offer an animal companion and there's a strong, ranged NPC with one too. So if you want to play with an edge you can build a party around that.
A fourth point is that you ought to play the game on a somewhat difficult setting. The base, normal difficulty is quite fine here. It's not really a game that has the same kind of rewards with interesting plot twists or interesting character choices, IMO. Those things are there, but they're not the game's strength. Its strengths are its deep combat system and its deep party management strategy that Julius mentions. And you'll really miss out on what this game delivers best if you strip those elements away.
If you buy the full game with all the DLC, there's a rogue-like dungeon mode, Beneath the Stolen Lands, that can be great for exploring builds if you aren't sure on one, something like the Black Pits. Worth giving a go if you're worried about sinking tens of hours into the wrong character.
I'll agree, the game did take awhile to win me over as well. But if you like it, it can feel like a masterpiece because there's just so much danged content -- SoA + ToB amounts.
Good to see some people coming around to/changing their view of Kingmaker. It's what I expect if people give it a fair chance. I believe it will end up as a classic. It's recent sales have been quite excellent even if belated, almost to D:OS2 sales.
I agree with most of @JuliusBorisov's points. One that I would emphasize is to NOT put kingdom management on auto. If you don't like that aspect of the game, which would be understandable, at least put it on the super-easy setting, but not auto. In auto, the AI makes some silly decisions which can really screw over your kingdom and your game, whereas making sound decisions in the kingdom management mini-game (which is actually pretty easy to handle once you get the hang of it) goes a long way to having a happy and satisfying playthrough.
So, I've been reading a lot over the Internet about complaints regarding this final area (and I mean that, A LOT).
I liked the challenge of the fights - I think the fight against the Wriggling Man was the most interesting in the game (and later I learned it was an optional fight), I had to think thoroughly about how to beat his magic and regeneration. The infamous Wild Hunt, after I read somewhere that you have to beat their monarchs first (or they just cannot die), was a huge pain - because the game doesn't explain the part about the monarchs. It's so unfortunate that nobody in-game explained to you how they can be killed. But their abilities, including paralysis, seemed cool: I liked the game finally made me use Free Action spells I prepared a long time ago. It took me hours to google the info about why enemies just don't die at near dead, and hours in-game when my party was obliterated again and again.
I never wanted to decrease the difficulty, or something similar, - I just couldn't (for the sake of it) - understand how the monarchs work. Even golems couldn't be killed if they came with the Wild Hunt units. That was counterintuitive and had no in-game explanation.
What I didn't like (in addition to the monarchs) was actually a story bit. A big spoiler.
They killed Jaethal without me being able to influence anything. I was SO MAD at that decision and still am. Imagine losing, say, Aerie, when you come to Hell with Irenicus just because of the story choices. Or imagine your BG2 party coming back from Ust-Natha, and on the surface, Keldorn, who wasn't in your party, just kills Viconia "because of story choices". Yes, I read online how you can save her, but I didn't want to kill Tristian, neither did I want to choose a "good" ending for Jaethal. Also, this required metagaming very much, and I try to play without spoilers.
This is so silly. Not only she was a vital party member with spells manually picked for each level (and I relied on her undead status a lot - eg. someone panicked, she had an anti-fear spell; someone got paralysed, she had a free action spell ready), she had a great story and I just don't agree she could be killed in that situation by Tristian. At the very least, the game should have let me pick sides and help one character against the other. And during the whole game, there were 0 hints these characters would hate each other - compare it to BG banters between opposing characters.
They also killed Lindzi. Not that she was my main party character. But she also had those spontaneous spells, which I manually kept picking during the whole game. So in a moment, I lost 2 characters who could help tremendously in the most difficult fights of the whole game. Losing 2 characters with Vancian magic at this stage of the game, for whatever story reasons, is a bad design decision.
What I also didn't like is that the game (again) didn't explain in detail how the fog actually works (that it's similar to teleports - for quite a long time I thought it worked just as a gate - you pass through the fog to get to the other side of it. It didn't occur to me that it's a teleport to another place until I started reading about the dungeon online.
It's actually very sad, the final area creating so many problems for the player, and not good problems I have to say. I remember the final locations of other games (PoE, DOS 1, DOS 2, original BG, IWD) and I have to admit this is where P:K lets you down big time.
Since this is a final area of the game, it leaves the last impression on the player (at least it did on me), and that's not good. And I found the displease towards the final area among different players seems to be universal.
I remember being frustrated with the HATEOT on my first playthrough. I had nightmarish flashbacks to the horror that is the Fell Wood in IWD2.
Now that I’ve gone through the House a half-dozen times, many of those without the benefit of 18 months worth of patches, I have come to respect what the developer put together. Player agency shouldn’t be removed to this extent without fantastic reasoning. Once I realized the gravity of what my party was facing, it dawned on me that the design was really almost genius.
I don’t want to be spoilery so I’ll stop here. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts once you’ve finished your playthrough.
The final area and chapter were tacked on to the game as a KS stretch goal. Suffice it to say that's a bad idea for a stretch goal. The game would've been just fine ending without that extra (poorly put together) chapter.
As for lost companions, yes I always hate that in any game. In this game in my first playthrough, I had happened to read a post somewhere about Jaethal and so was able to set up my choices ahead of time to ensure she and every one of my companions ended up surviving. But of course Linzi is the one companion you cannot save. And I truly liked Linzi, and had her in my party continuously from the beginning. So I was really pissed about her utterly pointless death.
Yeah. One of my biggest issues with the whole game relates to that situation. A single dialogue choice made literally 80 hours ago reverberates so strongly that you lose a character or two at the end of the game. I appreciate that the developer wanted choices to matter, but I still feel it was shoddily handled. I wouldnt mind it even if those decisions made things harder/worse at the end of the game, but there was still some means to keep the characters you want - provided you were willing to do what was necessary.
has anyone finished the "rogue-like" mode of beneath the stolen lands yet?
i seem to be having trouble in finding one of the bosses;
the captor and the captive
so what happened was on level 13 or so, one of them showed up ( from the looks of it, 2 were supposed to be there? ) but anyway, there was only 1, so i annihilated the dude, and kept going, but now im on level 37 and still haven't found the other guy ( and my journal has not updated saying that i have succeeded, which is what the journal does when you kill one of the dungeon bosses)
is this something that happens regularily? i saw one post online where someone said that had to do 18 runs before they were able to kill all the bosses ( because for some reason it seems to be random on each play through? ) and i say F*** that, the rogue like mode is kind of cool and all the first 2 or 3 times you play it, but by play 4, its basically just the same garbage same pile over and over again
is there a quicker way to do this? because if not, im just going to crank the difficulty down to the easiest setting and give everyone scythes to speed run these play throughs because mindless grind is pretty boring
It took me like 100 hours or so to beat kingmaker but I currently have 600 hours total just from the roguelike mode. Yes, you only get one boss per run, and the boss of each run is randomized, so you do have to run it multiple times. I viewed it as a fun side mode to try out different class compositions and builds. I think truly 'beating' it is near impossible because you have to find items as well for the true ending and those items may or may not appear each run, I think it's like 16 items total? 4 for each boss, and then you have to kill each boss at least once.
Alternatively you can just do the 4 bosses I think and fight the last boss without the extra stuff. Honestly, if you're not enjoying making dif characters and trying out the dif classes, I wouldn't even bother 'beating it'.
It took me like 100 hours or so to beat kingmaker but I currently have 600 hours total just from the roguelike mode. Yes, you only get one boss per run, and the boss of each run is randomized, so you do have to run it multiple times. I viewed it as a fun side mode to try out different class compositions and builds. I think truly 'beating' it is near impossible because you have to find items as well for the true ending and those items may or may not appear each run, I think it's like 16 items total? 4 for each boss, and then you have to kill each boss at least once.
Alternatively you can just do the 4 bosses I think and fight the last boss without the extra stuff. Honestly, if you're not enjoying making dif characters and trying out the dif classes, I wouldn't even bother 'beating it'.
the reason why i would like to beat it, is for the achievement, but man that is some gratuitous grind to get it
how far down do i have to go before i can start over? usually i only hit around level 37 or so and start over, and so far i have done 4 runs, and found 2 of the items and 4 or 5 notes or whatever
I wouldn't call the game a masterpiece. My initial criticism (requires metagaming, a lot of systems are not explained or explained poorly, etc) still stands. You don't need to absolutely adore the game to be able to like it. Eg. I wouldn't want to use custom companions who don't talk if the game allows you to have full NPCs with their stories and personalities.
Bear with me, P:K fans, during this post.
I still haven't finished my run as I got disappointed the game didn't end after Nyrissa (I expected the final battle to happen just after that - instead, they took away my magic, changed my and enemy dice for fights and made me go through mundane encounters again, all with the limited timeline, again). It added to the disappointment from the House at the Edge of Time problems.
So I got curious about what could make me replay the game, considering some of the players had 6+ runs through the game.
1) What if I could change classes of companions?
I learned I could do that with a mod and some mumbo-jumbo (as I don't agree with spending money on respeccing companions if I decided to change their classes) editing of saves.
The end result is amazing. I spent probably 5 hours thinking about their classes and reading about their abilities/planning.
Why not give this option to the player then by default? I was conscious enough not to change the archetype of characters but it was so fun to turn Valerie into a Kinetic Knight, or add a subclass to Amiri!
You will hate me for this - but the DOS games give you this option, to turn a companion into whatever class you need. So you're not bound by their class to play a party with characters you don't fully like, personality-wise.
I already checked - P:WotR has an in-game option to respec the companions, but it only zeroes their levels. So a mod is required.
2) What if the difficulty setting meant new enemies in encounters + new abilities for them + maybe smarter AI?
Alas. I had to learn that here it only tweaks the chances of your enemies to hit you with weapons or magic, and the chances of you to hit enemies. It also makes skills checks harder to pass, thus increasing the chances for save-scumming.
You will hate me again for this - but I've grown so fond of the SCS approach to difficulty - the game still plays fair. It doesn't make the dice loaded dice. It makes you as the player choose and pick the same systems, without the need to powergame. SoD has that approach as well. And... the DOS games.
Even PoE had extra enemies in encounters based on the difficulty.
So I can't, unfortunately, get a new experience against smarter AI in a new playthrough.
While you can't change their initial levels, Kingmaker does give you pretty broad freedom in multiclassing. So you can still make companions very different.
I'm personally not a fan of how the multiclassing system works here or even how it's worked in D&D from 3rd ed on. The system is pretty rife with min-max abuse that makes little sense in a "role-playing" sense. For example, lots of bonuses at level one for various classes, a true min-maxer is encouraged to do things like toss on one level of monk, paladin, alchemist (two in this case) to many builds.
Very well said on the difficulty settings though. I wish Kingmaker had harder difficulties that weren't just loading the dice against you.
I finished the game! I DID IT. 248 hours 40 min - I DID IT!!! And oh boy after the final foe died, the game finally provided me with the achievement of finding true love!
It was absolutely rewarding to breeze through enemies across the final 3 maps, inflicting a crit after a crit. At one point, Amiri critted for 100 damage while Valerie critted for 53, almost simultaneously. Valerie's final AC: 59, 51 Flat-Footed, 31 Touch. So a tower shield specialist definitely rules supreme in the endgame. In some battles, she stayed alone against 5 enemies after the party died, and won.
I was worried regarding the very last fight as the game doesn't let you save during combat, and the fight has a few stages. Thankfully, we didn't really have big issues. At one point, they killed Harrim and Amiri, but then everyone got raised with full health. It wasn't clear for me where the party members were when the final episode of that fight happened, so we lost Octavia to some AoE (I thought I had to fight the final enemy alone!), but it was all good in the end.
The secret ending - unlocked, the final battle - won from the first attempt. I liked how the game dotted the i's and crossed the t's with the epilogue pictures.
I know I was harsh regarding the game, and I still remember that criticism. But overall, the game is fun and, as my initial experience with P:WotR shows, became a great springboard for a greater game from the same studio. This way, all of us got a new RPG series, a new world, a new system, and hundreds of stories.
Yeah my P:Km parties always include Amiri, Valerie, and Linzi. You cannot beat Valerie for tanking defense, or Amiri for 2H weapon crit damage. And Linzi's just too sweet for me to leave out.
Comments
Ay mamacita, this could wipe out your entire party even in story mode XDD
You can skip this optional fight, tho. The critical path is not that hardcore.
Aaand they´re still patching the game 2 years later... They end up fixing the annoying "immunity" message
Getting back turned out to be fun so far. I think I found some balance in my party and their spells/abilities.
Right now, it shows I have 150 hours in the game. This is how much time it took for the game to start "clicking" for me. I usually don't give up on games easily and P:K seems to follow the route of PoE for me where I found a way to enjoy the game many, many hours into it after a few failed attempts. I think understanding the complex combat system and other complex things such as managing your logistics/travelling helped.
- The fight against the whole barbarian camp with 18 (!) enemies surrounding the party with no prebuffing. Made me cast ALL our AoE spells to cover more ground than is shown on my 2k monitor. So many graphics flying around: webs, clouds, storms, etc etc.
- The fight against 40+ zombies. Even PoE with its MANY undead couldn't really reproduce that feeling of a zombie horde.
- The fight against a wizard and his undead army. In the first real "wizard" fight, it was a joy to find a way to go through his protections and not being overwhelmed by the undead.
- The fight against 4 daemons.
- The fight against 5 ancient elementals.
- The fight against golems.
- The fight against Ferocious Soul Eaters. How creative that has been!
- And the final chapter fight, obviously. I didn't rest just before the final chamber - and after the fight, I hardly had any spells left on my characters. I like how with lvls 11-12 for my party, Evocation spells get their power and slowly become useful.
All those enemies which drain your stats. The different challenges in nearly every fight. The fresh experience in every fight. It was especially cool that I didn't have to tweak my spell selection when I came to this dungeon. I didn't spoil myself and didn't read any tips. I might have missed some content not having Tristian in the party but I decided to play with the setup I've got used to and the setup I've been liking.
My party:
2 tanks - Valerie (obviously), Okbo (0.5 tank) and Harrim (0.5 tank, switching to melee when I need his tanking)
3 DPS - Ekundayo (obviously), Jaethal, Octavia (her "trickster" additions to spells and sneak attacks in general, plus the favourite (now) school of Evocation, Conjurations summons
C/C - Conjuration wizard (the main character), Octavia with her Transmutation spells
Support - Harrim, Jaethal, Octavia
This combination of interchangeable roles allows me to have different sources of poison/decease/blindness/elemental/alignment/death protection. Now after I've completed the dungeon, I found this good guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/ht3hfs/a_nice_little_guide_to_vordakais_tomb/ - the majority of tips I see there I have been actually using myself. I'm playing on Normal settings for everything (1.0 damage, Death's door status) with RtwP (I think the game is designed for this mode, not TB).
I also have to add, the rewards for this quest were substantial: lots of good loot in the dungeon (it's very important for the player to find all those items for "wow" moments), and the kingdom bonuses.
I'm with you guys, I love it, one of the most fun areas. Also just about exactly the right length - you feel drained and exhausted by the end of it, but not bored or tedious. It feels so satisfying when you walk out of that dungeon...and straight into the next act, there's no let up now, you're in one of the crunch points of the plot!
And of course, the main story is now interesting and the lady antagonist is intriguing. I wish the story didn't wait 60 hours until it finally grabbed me.
I liked the next act's dungeon as well, but it was shorter. The final battle (Armag) was more difficult than even Vordekai himself - but I liked it of course. Finally got access to lvl 7 spells, having fun with game systems. I have started to use rods and metamagic - and it makes the player's possibilities so varied. That is some big compliment - but I would say that the combat system of P:K is more interesting and varied than original BG games... More classes, more meaningful choices with every level up, more varied spells, metamagic, rods, many more suffixes for items. Overall, I would say that today's games such as P:K, PoE and DOS definitely move the genre forward. The only thing I miss is the "magic chess" battles similar to the SCS mod.
I'm finding more and more pieces of information about the main plot and it intrigues me with each new event. I salute the game for
While travelling around, I stumbled across a dragon lair. I was waiting so much for a challenging fight, and I got it! I went in blind and didn't even know what kind of dragon it would be. Turned out to be a Black Dragon, so it was bad news for my party which concentrates on Acid spells. We still won from the first attempt, because we used all sorts of scrolls and wands, including Valerie (I was putting points into magic device using for her). Screenshots from the fight:
And oh my! The rewards for the fight were excellent!
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1184370/view/2983059739691732922
- to everyone who has been on the fence regarding the game, the free weekend is probably the best chance to try & see for yourself
- you get more than 2 hours (a refund period)
- just don't go in thinking it's "a new BG", or a game similar to BG
- think about it as an RPG with complex systems, an isometric view, close to the DnD rules (the Pathfinder rules if you're familiar with them) - but built around the kingdom management
- the kingdom management is an essential part of this game and is quite fun, I would recommend against turning it off (making it automatic)
- accept that the game has a strategy element in it, - I mean not combat strategy here, - but map strategy, where and when you travel
- start slow, experiment, try to understand every new spell you come across, or every new feat you can pick
- reload when you need, try again, reload - to be able to understand what the game wants from you
- google your questions or ask freely
- think about the character class you gravitate towards, and go with it - but don't experiment much with multiclassing on your first attempts - it can backfire
- if you're starting to feel that you want another class, restart as a new character - the game is very long, and the sooner you get "your" character, the better, it would be difficult to go through a 150-hour adventure with a class you're not much fond of
- once you get your kingdom, ALWAYS complete the MAIN quest first, side quests later, or your kingdom will be in a danger and you won't feel safe
- always use mid/long term buffs, rest a lot - basically, rest before starting exploring every new area, the game is designed the way you should enter fights buffed; don't be afraid to rest, including when travelling on the map
If I used this mindset back when I started playing the game, it would have changed everything completely for me.
I personally play on a custom difficulty with everything set to 1:1 (in terms of the party's damage vs enemy's damage), which is a modified Normal setting. I also play with RtwP and haven't tried a TB mode - I didn't need it even in the hardest of fights.
A second thing is your point on buffs. A definite yes to this, many, many of the 10 minutes per level, 1 hour per level buffs are absolutely excellent and the best use of your spell slots in many cases. And the game is very much designed for areas with multiple fights expecting you to buff up your party a bunch and then efficiently run down mob after mob.
A third point I'd add on to this, if you're finding combat challenging but don't want to turn difficulty down, is a general strategy. Summons + relying on ranged with your party members + AoE disabling spells like Grease or Web or others. On its base difficulty settings, the game can be punishing to melee NPC's. You really only want to roll with the one or two or three (in the case of your own) best tanky NPC's, and have everyone else be ranged. The OP combat strategy very much resembles BG1, generally. Even on top of this, animal companions are also very strong, because they are somewhat immune to the permadeath mechanic. Many subclasses offer an animal companion and there's a strong, ranged NPC with one too. So if you want to play with an edge you can build a party around that.
A fourth point is that you ought to play the game on a somewhat difficult setting. The base, normal difficulty is quite fine here. It's not really a game that has the same kind of rewards with interesting plot twists or interesting character choices, IMO. Those things are there, but they're not the game's strength. Its strengths are its deep combat system and its deep party management strategy that Julius mentions. And you'll really miss out on what this game delivers best if you strip those elements away.
If you buy the full game with all the DLC, there's a rogue-like dungeon mode, Beneath the Stolen Lands, that can be great for exploring builds if you aren't sure on one, something like the Black Pits. Worth giving a go if you're worried about sinking tens of hours into the wrong character.
I'll agree, the game did take awhile to win me over as well. But if you like it, it can feel like a masterpiece because there's just so much danged content -- SoA + ToB amounts.
I agree with most of @JuliusBorisov's points. One that I would emphasize is to NOT put kingdom management on auto. If you don't like that aspect of the game, which would be understandable, at least put it on the super-easy setting, but not auto. In auto, the AI makes some silly decisions which can really screw over your kingdom and your game, whereas making sound decisions in the kingdom management mini-game (which is actually pretty easy to handle once you get the hang of it) goes a long way to having a happy and satisfying playthrough.
So, I've been reading a lot over the Internet about complaints regarding this final area (and I mean that, A LOT).
I liked the challenge of the fights - I think the fight against the Wriggling Man was the most interesting in the game (and later I learned it was an optional fight), I had to think thoroughly about how to beat his magic and regeneration. The infamous Wild Hunt, after I read somewhere that you have to beat their monarchs first (or they just cannot die), was a huge pain - because the game doesn't explain the part about the monarchs. It's so unfortunate that nobody in-game explained to you how they can be killed. But their abilities, including paralysis, seemed cool: I liked the game finally made me use Free Action spells I prepared a long time ago. It took me hours to google the info about why enemies just don't die at near dead, and hours in-game when my party was obliterated again and again.
I never wanted to decrease the difficulty, or something similar, - I just couldn't (for the sake of it) - understand how the monarchs work. Even golems couldn't be killed if they came with the Wild Hunt units. That was counterintuitive and had no in-game explanation.
What I didn't like (in addition to the monarchs) was actually a story bit. A big spoiler.
This is so silly. Not only she was a vital party member with spells manually picked for each level (and I relied on her undead status a lot - eg. someone panicked, she had an anti-fear spell; someone got paralysed, she had a free action spell ready), she had a great story and I just don't agree she could be killed in that situation by Tristian. At the very least, the game should have let me pick sides and help one character against the other. And during the whole game, there were 0 hints these characters would hate each other - compare it to BG banters between opposing characters.
They also killed Lindzi. Not that she was my main party character. But she also had those spontaneous spells, which I manually kept picking during the whole game. So in a moment, I lost 2 characters who could help tremendously in the most difficult fights of the whole game. Losing 2 characters with Vancian magic at this stage of the game, for whatever story reasons, is a bad design decision.
What I also didn't like is that the game (again) didn't explain in detail how the fog actually works (that it's similar to teleports - for quite a long time I thought it worked just as a gate - you pass through the fog to get to the other side of it. It didn't occur to me that it's a teleport to another place until I started reading about the dungeon online.
It's actually very sad, the final area creating so many problems for the player, and not good problems I have to say. I remember the final locations of other games (PoE, DOS 1, DOS 2, original BG, IWD) and I have to admit this is where P:K lets you down big time.
Since this is a final area of the game, it leaves the last impression on the player (at least it did on me), and that's not good. And I found the displease towards the final area among different players seems to be universal.
I remember being frustrated with the HATEOT on my first playthrough. I had nightmarish flashbacks to the horror that is the Fell Wood in IWD2.
Now that I’ve gone through the House a half-dozen times, many of those without the benefit of 18 months worth of patches, I have come to respect what the developer put together. Player agency shouldn’t be removed to this extent without fantastic reasoning. Once I realized the gravity of what my party was facing, it dawned on me that the design was really almost genius.
I don’t want to be spoilery so I’ll stop here. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts once you’ve finished your playthrough.
Coup de grace can be used to eliminate regenerating foes without using special damage effects.
BTW, I hint. Create a druid merc.
Druids are amazing. Mainlyu when they get creeping doom
i seem to be having trouble in finding one of the bosses;
the captor and the captive
so what happened was on level 13 or so, one of them showed up ( from the looks of it, 2 were supposed to be there? ) but anyway, there was only 1, so i annihilated the dude, and kept going, but now im on level 37 and still haven't found the other guy ( and my journal has not updated saying that i have succeeded, which is what the journal does when you kill one of the dungeon bosses)
is this something that happens regularily? i saw one post online where someone said that had to do 18 runs before they were able to kill all the bosses ( because for some reason it seems to be random on each play through? ) and i say F*** that, the rogue like mode is kind of cool and all the first 2 or 3 times you play it, but by play 4, its basically just the same garbage same pile over and over again
is there a quicker way to do this? because if not, im just going to crank the difficulty down to the easiest setting and give everyone scythes to speed run these play throughs because mindless grind is pretty boring
Alternatively you can just do the 4 bosses I think and fight the last boss without the extra stuff. Honestly, if you're not enjoying making dif characters and trying out the dif classes, I wouldn't even bother 'beating it'.
the reason why i would like to beat it, is for the achievement, but man that is some gratuitous grind to get it
how far down do i have to go before i can start over? usually i only hit around level 37 or so and start over, and so far i have done 4 runs, and found 2 of the items and 4 or 5 notes or whatever
Bear with me, P:K fans, during this post.
I still haven't finished my run as I got disappointed the game didn't end after Nyrissa (I expected the final battle to happen just after that - instead, they took away my magic, changed my and enemy dice for fights and made me go through mundane encounters again, all with the limited timeline, again). It added to the disappointment from the House at the Edge of Time problems.
So I got curious about what could make me replay the game, considering some of the players had 6+ runs through the game.
1) What if I could change classes of companions?
I learned I could do that with a mod and some mumbo-jumbo (as I don't agree with spending money on respeccing companions if I decided to change their classes) editing of saves.
The end result is amazing. I spent probably 5 hours thinking about their classes and reading about their abilities/planning.
Why not give this option to the player then by default? I was conscious enough not to change the archetype of characters but it was so fun to turn Valerie into a Kinetic Knight, or add a subclass to Amiri!
You will hate me for this - but the DOS games give you this option, to turn a companion into whatever class you need. So you're not bound by their class to play a party with characters you don't fully like, personality-wise.
I already checked - P:WotR has an in-game option to respec the companions, but it only zeroes their levels. So a mod is required.
2) What if the difficulty setting meant new enemies in encounters + new abilities for them + maybe smarter AI?
Alas. I had to learn that here it only tweaks the chances of your enemies to hit you with weapons or magic, and the chances of you to hit enemies. It also makes skills checks harder to pass, thus increasing the chances for save-scumming.
You will hate me again for this - but I've grown so fond of the SCS approach to difficulty - the game still plays fair. It doesn't make the dice loaded dice. It makes you as the player choose and pick the same systems, without the need to powergame. SoD has that approach as well. And... the DOS games.
Even PoE had extra enemies in encounters based on the difficulty.
So I can't, unfortunately, get a new experience against smarter AI in a new playthrough.
I'm personally not a fan of how the multiclassing system works here or even how it's worked in D&D from 3rd ed on. The system is pretty rife with min-max abuse that makes little sense in a "role-playing" sense. For example, lots of bonuses at level one for various classes, a true min-maxer is encouraged to do things like toss on one level of monk, paladin, alchemist (two in this case) to many builds.
Very well said on the difficulty settings though. I wish Kingmaker had harder difficulties that weren't just loading the dice against you.
It was absolutely rewarding to breeze through enemies across the final 3 maps, inflicting a crit after a crit. At one point, Amiri critted for 100 damage while Valerie critted for 53, almost simultaneously. Valerie's final AC: 59, 51 Flat-Footed, 31 Touch. So a tower shield specialist definitely rules supreme in the endgame. In some battles, she stayed alone against 5 enemies after the party died, and won.
I was worried regarding the very last fight as the game doesn't let you save during combat, and the fight has a few stages. Thankfully, we didn't really have big issues. At one point, they killed Harrim and Amiri, but then everyone got raised with full health. It wasn't clear for me where the party members were when the final episode of that fight happened, so we lost Octavia to some AoE (I thought I had to fight the final enemy alone!), but it was all good in the end.
The secret ending - unlocked, the final battle - won from the first attempt. I liked how the game dotted the i's and crossed the t's with the epilogue pictures.
I know I was harsh regarding the game, and I still remember that criticism. But overall, the game is fun and, as my initial experience with P:WotR shows, became a great springboard for a greater game from the same studio. This way, all of us got a new RPG series, a new world, a new system, and hundreds of stories.
Thank you so much, Pathfinder: Kingmaker!