Pathfinder Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition - now with turn-based combat

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I can see it being soloed, but I doubt an Ironman run is doable. Especially not without skipping out on quite a few encounters. Sylvan Sorcerer is a good choice to solo because it's basically cheating (Pets are basically undying NPCs), but if I were to try it, I'd do a Dark Kineticist. They're actually quite decent skill monkeys. The XP gain would be fast enough to where Wall, Bowling, Pushing, and Deadly Earth infusions would come online quickly. Then you could just sleepwalk through most of the game.

 

[Average Manatee]

Keep in mind that "Last Azlanti" mode isn't actual Ironman, it's just 1 save max, you can still reload it all you want. So that's certainly possible if you want to brag to people who think its actual ironman.

Dark Kineticist is by far the worst version when it comes to actual combat since you have to win fights first before you power up (also INT boosters on your head conflict with kinetic diadems). I'm not sure if extra XP from a few more skills would outweigh that. I think you need to survive into about mid chapter 2 to get enough XP soloing (just looking at XP tables) for Deadly Earth? But that's assuming you are doing everything and you probably can't.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Is it possible to Solo this game?

yes

Well duh, it's a single player game.

 

[EdgyRightWinger]

Keep in mind that "Last Azlanti" mode isn't actual Ironman, it's just 1 save max, you can still reload it all you want. So that's certainly possible if you want to brag to people who think its actual ironman.

That's cheating. The game deletes your save if you get killed, though GOG Galaxy likes to restore your save from the cloud.

I have abused this myself for practice, but I don't pretend I've accomplished anything after it happens.

 

[Axel_am]

I suggest you try doing chapter 6 without a guide and document it here. That's where I tapped out.

The house? It was a bitch the first time by trying to play smart. Second time 'round, just kill everything, switch lantern, kill everything. Pretty bad still, not as shit as Wrath's final chapter.

I'm currently going through WRATH. I'll do a second playthrough of Kingmaker at some point in the future but the last chapter is pure ass.

The difficulty spike is way too severe and there's just a lot of bullshit.

 

[D_X]

I'm currently going through WRATH

Come back once you finish it, I'd be curious to hear your opinion about its endgame.

 

[Grunker]

I suggest you try doing chapter 6 without a guide and document it here. That's where I tapped out.

The house? It was a bitch the first time by trying to play smart. Second time 'round, just kill everything, switch lantern, kill everything. Pretty bad still, not as shit as Wrath's final chapter.

I'm currently going through WRATH. I'll do a second playthrough of Kingmaker at some point in the future but the last chapter is pure ass.

The difficulty spike is way too severe and there's just a lot of bullshit.

The game is so piss easy after level 10 the difficulty spike at the end is much needed. House is garbage but not because of difficulty

 

[Axel_am]

I suggest you try doing chapter 6 without a guide and document it here. That's where I tapped out.

The house? It was a bitch the first time by trying to play smart. Second time 'round, just kill everything, switch lantern, kill everything. Pretty bad still, not as shit as Wrath's final chapter.

I'm currently going through WRATH. I'll do a second playthrough of Kingmaker at some point in the future but the last chapter is pure ass.

The difficulty spike is way too severe and there's just a lot of bullshit.

The game is so piss easy after level 10 the difficulty spike at the end is much needed. House is garbage but not because of difficulty

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. At that point I just felt the game wasn't respecting my time at all.

I feel like Kingmaker would have benefited a lot if it was shorter. Just like Agesilaus I was thinking I was towards the end of the game after the Barbarian chapter.

 

[Axel_am]

I'm currently going through WRATH

Come back once you finish it, I'd be curious to hear your opinion about its endgame.

Will do! So far I'm enjoying it much more than Kingmaker.

 

[Agesilaus]

HALFWAY??????

There is absolutely no way that I am only halfway through this mess of a story

More like 70% done, chapter 5 and 6 are not that long. Although that dungeon in chapter 6 is the most annoying thing ever if you don't play it with a guide.

Oh, trust me, I'm playing this with a guide. I'd like to finish it in this lifetime.

I suggest you try doing chapter 6 without a guide and document it here. That's where I tapped out.

I tapped out after the festival held by Irovetti or whoever. The story ground to a halt and I had to focus on other things, and I lost my desire to return to the game and skip days until the next plot point.

I watched a video of the final battle and ending credits, I feel like I won.

Instead of going right into pathfinder, I am giving PoE 1 a second chance and will try out the White March, too. Then probably do PoE 2 for the millionth time, it is a genuinely good game and Id like to say hello to Rymrgand again.


Or maybe Colony Ship will be released.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Average Manatee one thing I didn't think about is how the Dark Elementalist needs creature with CR => PC level to suppress burn. Soloing would make that an issue. I was focusing more on how they get tons of skills and skill bonuses. Those are very important in Owlcat games, and net major XP. Also Use Magic Device would be super useful. Scrolls and wands would be much needed support until they get to Level 6 and then 10 for the blast infusions (Torrent and Wall).

 

[Bad Sector]

Bought Pathfinder: Kingmaker around 2019 but never played it (i planned on playing it at some point later back then but because of the game's size i always postponed it for "later'). However i felt like playing some isometric CRPG lately and thought about trying it out. My very first impression during making the character was "this reminds me of NWN1" :-P. Well that didn't last long, though the characters standing there during combat for several seconds and getting their faces mauled before performing some action did remind me of JarlFrank's rants about that in NWN1 :-P. It is a bit amusing how in turn based mode (i appreciate that you can toggle between RtwP and turn-based at any moment) some actions like drinking a potion can be performed much faster than in "realtime" mode.

I've been playing for a few days now and i've made my barony and handled the first wave of the curse. TBH i am not really fan of the timed quests the game has, it feels counter to the open world it provides and i don't feel i have enough time to explore and improve my party (not to mention that i really like to check out everything in an area) - and the game is chock full of time sinks, even though i try to avoid them.

Initially i was a bit overwhelmed by the barony management mechanics, i expected something like NWN2's keep act except more polished instead of hacked in, but P:K's seems more involved. I kinda got used to it, but i'm not sure exactly how all that stuff help me in the long run. I haven't formed an opinion on it yet, but it certainly wasn't what i expected (or looked for) when i started the game (i should note that i basically play the game "blind", i don't like reading much about games before playing them).

 

[ferratilis]

Playing RPGs blind is what I'd always recommend, but Kingmaker is a game where there are some things you should know beforehand, or you can screw yourself in the long run. Make sure to do your companion quests ASAP, don't ask why. Don't worry too much about timers, as long as you do story related stuff, you'll usually have time to do side quests before the next important event triggers. When you start building those villages, immediately visit them and do the artisan quests, you'll see why later. Increasing your Divine stat will eventually let you build teleports in your towns, it might be useful. I hope you're playing as a Lawful character, there's an important benefit to it. These are some things that the game never tells you, but they are useful.

 

[Average Manatee]

Kingmaker is kind of sneaky, it makes you think that time matters but in reality like 75% of your (in game) time is spent on the kingdom improvement tasks that take 14 days to finish. Around 15-20% is you walking around the map and its only about 5-10% that is you spending time clearing areas and resting. So taking your time to explore areas and clean out parts of the world map and finish optional content is not going to significantly slow down your kingdom progress.

 

[turkishronin]

Beautiful

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I agree that that kingdom management shouldn't be approached blind. My second game was FAR better, mostly because instead of doing OK at the kingdom stuff, I excelled. I recommend a first time player use a kingdom management guide. At the very least, the player needs to understand how things unlock. Beyond that, expand your territory as fast a possible. Minimize your wasted travel by plotting efficient multipurpose routes. Don't rest until you must. Establish villages with teleporters with the intention of using them as hubs. Rush artisan quests.

The very proactive player can be well established by the end of Chapter 2. It's hectic, but an incredibly worthy investment. After that it becomes easy to maintain and is mostly upside. You'll still have to be aggressive in expanding territories as they become available, but the worst will be behind you. Rushing Trobold can be really helpful if you're good at combat but need relief from the kingdom stuff. I'm also trying to remember about the event churn. I recall going back to the capital every 2 weeks being really helpful.

 

[turkishronin]

Do you actually need a guide to finish this game or just not picking feats at random like a retard would suffice?

 

[ferratilis]

I don't think you should follow a guide blindly, but also a lot of recommended feats are useless. What you should know are feat dependencies because the UI in Kingmaker doesn't telegraph this well (Wrath did this better).

Bookmark this, it will be useful:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...XpswG_jQPkytXdpOhZM/edit?pli=1#gid=1100152661

Also refer to this character building guide, there is a list of recommended feats:
https://www.neoseeker.com/pathfinder-kingmaker/guides/How_to_Build_a_Character

 

[Average Manatee]

Do you actually need a guide to finish this game or just not picking feats at random like a retard would suffice?

Core is definitely 100% doable, even easy for most of the game (roughly the 40% to 90% mark), simply playing every character single classed 1-20 straight with normal intuitive feat selection. I don't think its possible to fuck up builds significantly if you understand the very basic game system concepts and/or look at how things like AB vs. AC are calculated. The main thing to pay attention to is the spells lists which are full of buffs to be stacked or things that hard counter certain enemies.

 

[Bad Sector]

Don't worry too much about timers, as long as you do story related stuff, you'll usually have time to do side quests before the next important event triggers.

I just figured out (the hard way) that there are hidden timers. My own preferences aside (i dislike timed quests in general, i have enough deadlines in real life, i don't want them in my entertainment too), it feels inconsistent since at the same time i also had another quest where a bunch of people were waiting next to a river for several in-game months.

I hope you're playing as a Lawful character, there's an important benefit to it.

I'm actually playing a Chaotic Good character, the game has various dialog choices where you get to choose some alignment response and the Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral ones (CG is not always available - actually i think it is the least available option) kinda sound like you are some sort of libertarian monarch :-P.

Anyway, it is easier to complain than mentioning the good bits of a game (overall i like it so far otherwise i wouldn't still be playing it) but it does have a bunch of things i dislike (aside from those i mentioned previously):

1. "Immortal" enemies unless you have some sort of arbitrary thingamajig. At some point i found a dragon and i barely got to defeat it after trying a bunch of different approaches, i used a bunch of scrolls, potions, etc even had my characters be in a zigzag formation around it because it had some sort of unblockable attack that made a lot of damage on a line. Very enjoyable fight as i got to use almost every tool the game provided (and the first time i ever had to care about formation aside from placing the squishy mages outside of melee range). That is until the dragon fell down and... staid there moaning. I was hitting it over and over and it wouldn't die. I even switched to RtwP mode, had *everyone* on the team attack the dragon, went to make some coffee and came back and it was still lying there not dying. I tried enchanting (or whatever it is called) the fighers' weapons with my mages, using potions, bombs, wands, everything i could think of and it just wouldn't react. I read its description (including the entire wall of text at the end) and it mentioned something about "cold iron" (which i didn't have) to counteract the regeneration, but FFS my party did 10 times more damage per round than the dragon's regeneration. By the time i decided to abandon it (and reloaded because i spent most of my resources on this pointless fight) the dragon would be in the minus thousands of HP. If i end up finding a toothpick made out of cold iron and the dragon dies by getting pricked with that after falling him with regular weapons i'd be very annoyed.
   
   I can accept making NPCs/monsters harder to kill if they have resistances, but making them immortal feels cheap. Well, unless i can also do the same on my party, though i have a feeling the game wont provide that sort of consistency.
   
   
2. I'm not sure if it is a bug or a feature, though i err on the bug side as i can't think of a use, but i find it annoying that when i try to cast a spell in turn based mode the game doesn't calculate the overall action points needed - including walking - to figure out if i can do it or not and not let me do it if i can't. I forgot the number of times i had one of my clerics try to heal another character that isn't close, the healer stopped walking to the other character because they ran out of action points and by the next round i forgot the cleric was in "healing mode", clicked on an enemy to attack and the cleric healed the enemy instead :-P.
   
   
3. That one is certainly a bug, but sometimes the party characters do not respond to any command in turn based mode, they just stand there, do not attack or move and you can't even end their turn. Not sure what the reasons for this is but to work around that i have to exit from turn based mode and enter it again, which resets the round.

 

[ferratilis]

As for point 1., that's just not knowing the ruleset. I was also clueless about Pathfinder rules the first time I played, but the thing is, the game tells you a lot of stuff, you just have to be observant. Remember how journalists and beginners used to whine about the early game side quests with the swarms. The thing is, the quest giver tells you explicitly that swarms can't be killed in conventional ways. If you're playing on normal, he even gives you some alchemist's flasks (or maybe that's on every difficulty?). And you have everburning torches anyway. I think there was some similar hint for that dragon somewhere.

Can't help you with 2. or 3., because I never played in turn based mode.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah that's just a bit of an annoying part of the rules. You've probably already stumbled across cold iron weapons and just sold them, or could buy one cheaply at the capitol. I'm not sure if this is stated anywhere in game but a +3 or better weapon will also count as cold iron. You do only need a qualifying toothpick to deal 1 damage to kill the dragon.

I just figured out (the hard way) that there are hidden timers. My own preferences aside (i dislike timed quests in general, i have enough deadlines in real life, i don't want them in my entertainment too), it feels inconsistent since at the same time i also had another quest where a bunch of people were waiting next to a river for several in-game months.

Was it one of the side quests about dealing with the trolls? That's the only one that sticks out to me as time sensitive past the 1st chapter. Not saying that there are no other time sensitive quests just that I didn't notice them.

 

[Bad Sector]

As for point 1., that's just not knowing the ruleset.

I don't believe it matters where it comes from, i haven't played tabletop Pathfinder (or really any tabletop game, they weren't a thing where i grew up), perhaps it makes more sense in a tabletop environment, but at least as it is in the game it feels cheap to me and really soured an otherwise enjoyable fight. If i get to fight the dragon again i might know what it needs but it wont be the same, i'd just be repeating what i did previously.

the game tells you a lot of stuff, you just have to be observant. Remember how journalists and beginners used to whine about the early game side quests with the swarms.

I didn't follow the game before playing it at all, didn't read any review - as i wrote above i went in completely blind - so i didn't knew about the swarms and how they were perceived. However the swarms, while a bit annoying, kinda made sense (though i was thinking why can't i just stomp on the damn bugs? :-P) and there are different ways to kill them (this is why i tried a bunch of things with the dragon). Also you can't even attack the swarms whereas i fell the dragon and was making a ton of damage to him - i just couldn't finish him. If he was immune to all of my attacks i might have felt differently. I did find other enemies that were immune to my attacks and just left them for "later".

Also FWIW i found the dragon accidentally while exploring, i wasn't even expecting for the game to have a dragon in it :-P.

Though now that you mentioned the swarms, you did remind me of another annoyance that you can't seem to be able to abandon a fight without reloading a previous save. The game does autosave very often but i'd like to have a way to explicitly abandon a fight.

You've probably already stumbled across cold iron weapons and just sold them

Possibly, i did notice that some items mention what they are made of, but i only noticed it on armor items. I did start paying attention to all items i come across after the dragon encounter though :-P but haven't seen anything made out of cold iron. I can probably find one in various merchants though, i just don't feel like attempting the fight again for now.

Was it one of the side quests about dealing with the trolls?

No it was one about hunting monsters, i actually forgot about it (got it together with a bunch of other stuff before going to sleep - literally, not in game :-P). It wasn't a gameover quest, though it probably made things worse for what followed. I did finish the rest of the questline anyway.

 

[skaraher]

You know you can just Coup de grace the Linnorm. It's DnD, it doesn't scale to your plebeian level.

There is a sleeping bandit camp to teach you the coup ee grace mechanic in Act 1 and you had regenerating trolls the whole Act 2. Don't blame your shortsightedness on the game.

 

[Bad Sector]

You know you can just Coup de grace the Linnorm.

I actually didn't know about that, every time i tried to use Coup de grace on something the game wouldn't let me so i kinda stopped trying it early in the game and never realized what it was all about. I'll try to see if that works.

It's DnD, it doesn't scale to your plebeian level.

As i wrote i haven't played tabletop games so it might feel fine on such a setting. However FWIW i do not remember anything like that in the DnD-based computer games i have played - the closest would be enemies being immune to some types of weapons in NWN (which also happens in Pathfinder: Kingmaker) but i can accept that you may not be able to damage some ethereal being with a regular weapon or some dragon with thick scales with a simple dagger.

What i was seeing in the game however wasn't that, it was my party causing a lot of damage on a dragon that had fallen and while its regeneration couldn't keep up with the damage, it still wouldn't die.

There is a sleeping bandit camp to teach you the coup ee grace mechanic in Act 1

This doesn't ring a bell so i don't think i encountered that.

and you had regenerating trolls the whole Act 2.

The branded trolls can be killed in a variety of ways though, this is why - as i wrote above - i tried several approaches, potions, bombs, etc on the dragon. I might have missed something since i only tried it once.

In fact it is exactly because the game teaches you via the trolls that there are various ways to kill them that i kept trying to kill the dragon.

Don't blame your shortsightedness on the game.

How do you even read what i wrote as shortsightedness? I explicitly wrote that i encountered the dragon accidentally. Even then what annoyed me was the mechanic of immortality that can only be beaten with a specific thingamajig. I don't care where that comes from or even why it is there, what i care about is that i had an unexpected and otherwise enjoyable fight of the sort that i rarely see in RPGs that was soured at the end because of something i felt like an arbitrary and nonsensical requirement.

That said if the dragon can be killed with Coup de grace after falling (which i don't think i tried) then i take everything i wrote about this topic back and it was simply me ending up forgetting a mechanic that was introduced early. In fact i am curious to try it now.

Also i wonder if that is the case, if branded trolls can also be killed like that.