Demystifying the swarms meme, by anon.

[Pink Eye]

Anon managed to hunt down 1.0 version of Pathfinder: Kingmaker, in order to prove that swarms were doable even back then.
Entire conversation with Bokken in 1.0:

Spoiler

While Bokken does not provide the player with free bombs he does still sell them. Bokken also DOES mention that the cave IS over run by spiders.

Unlike the later versions, there is no pop up warning about swarms:

Spoiler

Anon attempts swarms at level 1:

Spoiler

He manages to down the first couple

After getting through the first wave a spider and a swarm are spawned from behind the player.

Spoiler

Torches are useful, but they don't do enough damage:

Spoiler

Anon dies..

Spoiler

Anon then reattempts at level 2.

Spoiler

Success

Anon then reattempts the swarms at higher difficulties. Not doable at hard. Swarms receive 25 AC in Hard. With a level 2 team this may not be possible. Anon dies:

Spoiler

Swarms are also doable with torches only on easy, funnily enough.

Spoiler

Anon:
Anyway so what did we learn about the original version of this encounter? What was facts and what was bullshit.
>your whole party is either level 1 or 2
Kinda true, you'd certainly have enough experience to reach second level by this point but I guess you could go into this fight without level up, it is still early in the game.

>the quest giver didn't warn you about any potential dangers and just said go into this cave and collect some berries for me and that's it. No warnings, no little pop-up telling you about swarms, nothing
Again half truth, there was no pop-up or explanation of how swarms work but he did say the caves were "overrun" with spiders

>find a Giant Spider, it's easy enough at your level but half way through that fight two spider swarms spawn and join the encounter.
Half truth, the swarms are there from the start they're just a little off to the side you can trigger them by just running over to them.

>somehow beat off and survive that first assault 3 more giant spiders would spawn from behind you, and an additional spider swarm bring the total to 4 giant spiders and 3 spider swarms.
False, the additional enemies were 1 giant spider and 1 spider swarm bringing the total to 2 giant spiders and 3 spider swarms.

>At level 1, 2, or even maybe 3 going in without prior knowledge was pretty much a death sentence.
I guess I'll give him that one, with the exception of setting the difficulty to easy going in without flasks or alchemist fire or someone to cast spells is pretty hopeless.

>initial release torches were bugged
Straight up bullshit, torches worked.

Summary:
The 4channers that continuously perpetuate the swarms meme are complete dunces. With the creation of this thread, I can now too demystify the swarms meme. In my experience, from release day, I was able to do the swarms at level 3.

Source: https://boards.4channel.org/v/thread/493971962#p494003478

 

[Pink Eye]

Also it was hotfix 1.0.2 that started giving the player warnings about the swarms:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/640820/discussions/0/3393916911749310676/
>Bokken will properly warn the player about the swarms in the cave and provide them with several flask of Alchemist's Fire. In addition, the tutorial about swarms and how to deal with them will be shown when entering the cave

 

[Shadenuat]

the real bullshit is 25 AC which is probably a double dip bug.

 

[Pink Eye]

the real bullshit is 25 AC which is probably a double dip bug.

Not sure. I thought it was part of the difficulty modifier. I don't remember what kind of AC the swarms had on Unfair during release day.

 

[Gregz]

It's not a meme, and Owlcat sucks ass.

 

[Trashos]

The whole notion that an optional fight should be doable early just because it is available early is total BS, afaic.

Also, who is the most durable companion against those swarms? I put a tanky Jaethal forward against them, but anon does not have her. It might be a good thing to try.

 

[rashiakas]

Swarms autohit, so no tanking there.

 

[Shadenuat]

The whole notion that an optional fight should be doable early just because it is available early is total BS

if it is availaible "physically" maybe; if it is presented as actual early quest not so much. you can say: but deconstruction

but the truth is Owlcat stated as much that they wanted this early fight to present swarm enemies early themselves, so it isn't a deconstruction/trap.

it is just a poorly made encounter. with Dragon Age 2 popping enemies.

miraculously they came up with even worse spider cave later, with something like 15 copypasted spiders.

 

[The Avatar]

The swarm rules have always been hated in the pathfinder community, but at least in the Kingmaker video game you can always-

• ignore the optional quest
• come back at a higher level
• find/hire more characters

Even more annoying in the early versions of Kingmaker was the occasional random encounter with higher level monsters like the hydra which could easily wipe your party at level 1/2. Yeah that game was pretty brutal at release.

 

[Pink Eye]

The whole notion that an optional fight should be doable early just because it is available early is total BS, afaic.

Also, who is the most durable companion against those swarms? I put a tanky Jaethal forward against them, but anon does not have her. It might be a good thing to try.

I used Valerie in release day on Unfair. Tried it with Jaethal in my walkthrough. Success on both accounts.

 

[Pink Eye]

It's not a meme, and Owlcat sucks ass.

It is a meme. This meme is perpetuated by steam fags, and chan fags.

 

[Gregz]

It's not a meme, and Owlcat sucks ass.

It is a meme. This meme is perpetuated by steam fags, and chan fags.

No, it's a fucking fact. I've never played a D&D game in my life that required waving a torch at something that otherwise was able to wipe my party. Utterly and completely retarded. Just like the other 1,000+ horrible design blunders to be found in their shitty game.

 

[Trashos]

Swarms autohit, so no tanking there.

I was not around for earlier versions of the game, but at least now you have giant spiders attacking along with the swarms. That is why you need the character to be tanky.

 

[Pink Eye]

Swarms autohit, so no tanking there.

I was not around for earlier versions of the game, but at least now you have giant spiders attacking along with the swarms. That is why you need the character to be tanky.

Wait you weren't around during release days? Oh dude, you missed out. I had some fun back then, but had to drop ithe game for half a year because my game suffered from the infinite loading thingie.

 

[Trashos]

Wait you weren't around during release days?

Not as a player. I started playing recently (when I started showing up in the main thread). I was skeptical about Kingmaker due to the time limits, but I am glad about how wrong I was. I am only on my 3rd playthrough currently.

I do usually give games some time "to mature" before I try them, anyway.

 

[Pink Eye]

Wait you weren't around during release days?

Not as a player. I started playing recently (when I started showing up in the main thread). I was skeptical about Kingmaker due to the time limits, but I am glad about how wrong I was. I am only on my 3rd playthrough currently.

I do usually give games some time "to mature" before I try them, anyway.

Well I'm glad you gave the game a chance! I love Pathfinder, and think it's a great game.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Swarms were never a problem. Giving Owlbears the strength of an Ancient Dragon is a problem.

 

[Pink Eye]

Swarms were never a problem. Giving Owlbears the strength of an Ancient Dragon is a problem.

I should create a thread to demystify that meme too.

 

[Dodo1610]

The real issue were a) Players who were no longer used to RPGs that give you quests that you can not immediately solve
b) PKM doesn't explain shit, Baldurs Gate 1 had a better tutorial. If the devs had actually bothered to implement one they had fewer people whining

Those things combined with the fact that half of the abilities were broken at release created the myth that PKM was insanely hard which it really never was.

 

[Pink Eye]

The real issue were a) Players who were no longer used to RPGs that give you quests that you can not immediately solve
b) PKM doesn't explain shit, Baldurs Gate 1 had a better tutorial. If the devs had actually bothered to implement one they had fewer people whining

Those things combined with the fact that half of the abilities were broken at release created the myth that PKM was insanely hard which it really never was.

The problem was that the myth never died. People are still parroting that meme to this day.

 

[Dodo1610]

The real issue were a) Players who were no longer used to RPGs that give you quests that you can not immediately solve
b) PKM doesn't explain shit, Baldurs Gate 1 had a better tutorial. If the devs had actually bothered to implement one they had fewer people whining

Those things combined with the fact that half of the abilities were broken at release created the myth that PKM was insanely hard which it really never was.

The problem was that the myth never died. People are still parroting that meme to this day.

That's just how the world works and why it's so important that Warth of the Chosen has a real tutorial and enough pop-up messages to help new players.

 

[Pink Eye]

The real issue were a) Players who were no longer used to RPGs that give you quests that you can not immediately solve
b) PKM doesn't explain shit, Baldurs Gate 1 had a better tutorial. If the devs had actually bothered to implement one they had fewer people whining

Those things combined with the fact that half of the abilities were broken at release created the myth that PKM was insanely hard which it really never was.

The problem was that the myth never died. People are still parroting that meme to this day.

That's just how the world works and why it's so important that Warth of the Chosen has a real tutorial and enough pop-up messages to help new players.

I think people should just rely on the community more when it comes to these types of issues. No amount of tutorials will be sufficient when it comes to these types of games, unless you're prepared to do research.

 

[user]

a) Players who were no longer used to RPGs that give you quests that you can not immediately solve

I've seen this complaint many times, in forums, youtube "reviewers" etc, about how the game caused them immense frustration and grief by not being predictable.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The game doesn't follow Core rules. I don't just mean that it flubs mechanics like sneak attacks, it also throws underlying game concepts like CR, EL, and NPC vs PC differences out the window. I only ever wanted a game that was accurate to Core rules, classifying this as a "meme" or "entitled players" is very far off the mark.

The developers can make whatever kind of game they wanted, but they claimed they were trying to recreate the tabletop experience and in that regard they failed miserably. The main complaints were from PnP players like me who were expecting an accurate rendition of the rules. I have heard every excuse for why the game doesn't follow the core rules, but nevertheless, it is a poor implementation of the Pathfinder tabletop game.

 

[Yosharian]

Whether the swarms are 'doable' at level 1 or 2 is beside the point.

Pathfinder's swarm mechanics are somewhat intuitive if the player takes the time to reflect upon how one might fight a 'swarm' of insects in real life, you can't carve up a swarm of insects easily with your longsword, that makes complete sense, swarms take extra damage from AOE, that makes complete sense, they swarm over you and crawl inside your armor so they autohit, that makes complete sense. The problem is that players aren't taught to think for themselves in many other aspects of the game, so they don't come to encounters like this thinking 'I wonder what new mechanics I will learn in this fight', rather they approach it as 'I wonder how I will apply the existing mechanics, that I have already learned, in this fight'. When I introduce swarms in PnP, I take care to explain to the players that this is a new enemy type, and that they must reflect carefully on how they might defeat it, or death will come swiftly.

Modern players generally expect gameplay to be handed to them on a platter and don't expect to have to do things like 'come back later when I'm level 3' or 'try using a different strategy than the one I've used successfully in the last 50 fights'. That's just how gaming is, now. It is what it is. The days of gamers cutting their teeth on difficult games is over, everything has to be fucking idiotproof now. Blame whoever or whatever you want, but that won't change the situation.

So you throw a bunch of fairly tough swarms in a set-piece fight with almost no hints as to what is coming (no, 'overrun with spiders' isn't an adequate warning for incoming swarms in a fantasy world where giant spiders exist and are generally what is expected when a questgiver says 'spiders btw'), in what is supposed to be an introductory side quest, and you expect it to go down well in 2019? It's just not going to work.

I'm not saying that a retarded pop-up warning about swarm mechanics is a good idea, but this encounter was badly-designed for this game. I will say that personally, I find it refreshing to come across enemies I cannot immediately beat, or that require extra strategic or tactical thinking to defeat. It's part of what makes RPGs fun. And I prefer not to have pop-up tutorials or other immersion-breaking hand-holding present in my games.

Oh and one more thing, torches don't do shit to the swarms unless it's on baby difficulty so acting like 'lol just use torches' is a thing is pretty disingenuous.