Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Roguey]

If you pick it up you mean.

I already have my DRM-free 1.04 installed, it's just a matter of choosing a time.

 

[Rivmusique]

The longer I play the worse the load times get, I'm at about 30 hours in and the load times are now reaching up to about 40 seconds. I assume this is going to get worse before it gets better.
I don't recall this happening in the base game, and it's the main thing putting me off finishing the game, particularly as I'm right in front of the Adra dragon and that means either trying to kill it, with however many reloads it takes to get a good RNG, or leaving, which is just more loading screens.

It's the save that's getting longer, it autosaves during (nearly?) every load screen. As you get further in to the game, save file gets larger, save time gets larger. I just finished it again and decided to count the time of my final save before activating the machine: 40-50 seconds (and that's just the save, so when it loads that is on top of a (for me) ~30 second load screen). Compared to ~10 when just starting.

Impressions:

Spoiler

I enjoyed the expansion content a lot, definitely contains all of the best fights in the game. Did it by starting a new POTD game and heading there with a party a ~6/7th level. I felt that most of the mandatory fights were appropriate for that level, but going to the optional encounters (and not just the two maps that you're told GO HERE WHEN YOU GET STRONK!, but off the path encounters on maps you need to be on for the main quest) had some difficult shit with enemies casting abilities I later realised were for level 13 characters. Still doable and a lot of fun. The STAY AWAY FROM HERE map in the White March I ended up doing before entering the battery at ~9/10, as I suspected it might have led to an alternate approach to a quest I was on. I felt that place was almost certainly for a max level group as high Defences and high level spells were all over the place. Doable with scrolls and some item abilities (suppress affliction), but I left the boss at the end of it for when I was max level.

I really liked Durgan's Battery as a dungeon, plenty of neat scripted interactions, puzzles and a fair few fun encounters, some of them ambushes. I think I may have got a bug, what is returning all the sigils (I think it was shield, sword and helm) to those statues on the mine level meant to do? It said something about movement behind the wall but nothing changed from what I could see. I enjoyed the story of the dwarves in-fighting and tensions, but I think it should have played a bigger part in their fall, as it is they just got beat down by a big mysterious threat that will come back in Part 2.

I liked most of the side quests in the village, except that one with the girl who wants you to take a scanner out and find ore deposits, seemed very off compared with the rest. Also, the one with the escaped slave, seems I should have been able to arrest him myself, but after killing his pursuer and telling him he just thanked me then fucked off. And the fisher stayed in town after he said he was confessing, which I think should have made him disappear. Pretty crazy that happening after I played SR:HK and got a similar bug where a guy I chased out of town just hung around. Also, the burning house, I sent in Eder at first, noticed the first check was survival, so backed out thinking I'd send my survival guy in. Nope, house burnt down because we'd decided it was too dangerous . I like the image of Eder "Fear not citizen, I will save the screaming woman!" standing in the doorway for 5 seconds, then backing out "Nah, nothing can be done".

Soulbound weapons are pretty great, their abilities at least. I enjoy getting other classes abilities as per rest/procs. Actually, magic weapons in general have a lot of this in TWM. The achievements to unlock new tiers are really fucking shit. A lot of leaving the last few mobs in a pack up and letting the soul bound weapon secure the kill, which isn't very fun. The numbers were ridiculous when I was doing it, seems latest patch has brought them down. Still not very fun though, especially 50(!!!!!) vessel kills for the Redeemer, when the 25% destroy vessels proc causes the kill not to count. Lucky I hadn't done Endless Paths or that shit never would have been finished. And the wizard/druid/priest staff, gave that to my wizard and it required me to beat things to death. If my wizard melees he summons parasitic staff or citzals lance ffs, god that was awful. 'The Grey Sleeper' was cool, riddles rather than in combat achievement hunting.

Level 13/14 spells were cool for priest (only three) and wizard (a better amount ... 7 maybe?), shit for druid (though I read that bug a few pages back, didn't even think to use that spell, though Haravias was barely in my party this playthrough), monks summon was alright, Cipher attack speed steal is decent, but I didn't use GM much and all hard enemies have high will so I don't think it'd be great, others I barely cared about. Multi-class talents mostly seemed lame to me, though I took the weak sneak attack on pretty much everyone, 15% free damage in nearly all fights.

Cragholdt's was the best bit for me. After I had completed TWM main area I was level 10/11 and decided to hit max level before going there, as I figured if anything is made for max level fun, it's that. As I steam rolled everything along the vanilla areas, desperately trying to make my own fun by doing solo/duo pulls I was pretty sure that making fun content for this high a level was not going to work. But Cragholdt was sweet. The encounters with the mercenaries had barbarians that jumped straight to your backline, wizard attempts to throw out all kinds of debuffs, priests that actually knew how to heal, monks being generally OP (seriously, all defences are high, they attack as fast and hard as a rogue, can summon two guys as strong as themselves, and ping pong party memebers all over the place. And their defences increase even more if you CC them and it wears off). Then inside you have a monsters with varied immunites/DRs and some apprentices, one of which you can ally with (I suspect you can sneak past the mercenaries up top and reach a peaceful resolution with their leader as well, I didn't do this though) and most of which have something interesting to say + a "have you been paying attention" puzzle before the boss fight so it's not all smash 'n' loot. It seemed really well tuned to me, was fun to go through it and use the two camping supplies I had on me + the two found there. Concelhaut himself...

Infinitron Regarding Concelhaut (the archmage):

Spoiler

It's not an epic wizard dual, he is ... errm, more than a wizard. Essentially a cheating mage, like Thaos is a cheating priest. Even accounting for POTD, his defences/DR and accuracy are way high and he has his own immunities. And his cast/recovery speed seemed quick. Also, he has a shit ton of (quite strong) friends with him.

More Impressions:

Spoiler

Still, best fight in the game. Was quite challenging for my (admittedly not ideal ... going full custom party I'd go two priests, two wizards, a fighter and ranger. Perhaps even just three priests three wizards) party. Winning strategy involved sacrificing summons/non-caster party members while everyone else buffed up (high accuracy is vital on POTD, so devotions of the faithful and prayer against fear need to stay up) and tried to drop as many of the enemies defences as possible (they all have different immunities and defensive focuses (ie. some have low reflex, some will etc.) and then targetting whatever was lowest with appropriate damage/CC. Ended up spending the last in game ~1min (so much longer actually playing it, with time spent paused) with just two wizards and a priests up, the wizards frontlining the few enemy melee that managed to not get CC'd or killed by keeping defensive self buffs rolling and priest healing/warding seal (is this broken? Seems to activate with +50 accuracy but it doesn't say that anywhere. Also, the second level priest spell that heals + damages in a line is definitely broken, noticed it when a Endless Paths second level Xaurip priest killed 3/6 level 13 party members with one cast ) while simultaneously dropping damage on Concelhaut hoping that Near Death would finally tick down. Great stuff, and I guess we are going to see more based on ***. Seemed odd how it ended storywise though, he says he wanted a Watcher but I don't think he actually called you there. Just lucky I guess?
***

Spoiler

He's a Lich. I assume we'll get more because unlike the Dragon's and other one time beasts, the bestiary entry didn't immediately jump to 100% on kill

Nu-Act IV:

Spoiler

When I took the plunge in to the endgame pit I got the WOULD YOU LIKE IT TO BE HARD OR FACEROLL popup, which had me excited for different enemy types or more adds with Thaos. Nope. Just a stat buff for Thaos and his two mates as I saw it, didn't even seem to apply to the trash leading up to him. Shame.

I liked the two companions well enough. Kind of sucked how Zahua gives you background for his quest but you can't get him to ask you to solve it, guess that'll be in part 2. Especially considering if you do take him to Thaos he seems to suggest he failed his intended task and the epilogue shows he never got around to it. I suspected this was coming as I played on, but I kind of hoped TWM part 2 would take place after Thaos is dead, so it'd make sense to take him down there and then fix his shit after. I thought Zahua's "You're task is the more urgent one, maybe we'll deal with mine after" even hinted at it. I also disliked Zahua's banters, a bit of "WOAH MAN DO YOU GUYS SEE THAT PIG IN A SKIRT LOLSTONER" shit. Doesn't come in to the conversations you have with him so much, or his interjections, thankfully, so he doesn't quite make Minsc levels of "please stop".

On Dragons: They aren't shitty roll-20-on-petrification-or-lose fights at all. Pretty sure Fort is one of their higher defences so it's borderline impossible to hit, I don't go for it outside of persistent AoE effects myself. Practically begging for save scum boredom if this is your strat. Just keep away from them (send in a sacrificial party member/summon or confuse their helpers), buff your accuracy, lower their defences, reflex is their lowest, can be brought lower by hitting will which isn't too high, but devotions of faithful/prot from fear is necessary, damn fear aura -20 accuracy. Then bomb with shit they aren't immune too/high DR against.

The New Dragon:

Spoiler

Ice dragon fight main threat is actually the spectres and oozes. Lot's of stuns/paralyse on hit and oozes petrify AoE on death. And there was a wraith that tele'd guys out of position. Something was also blinding people, so suppress affliction is a good idea I suppose.

Does anyone know of a better source than this http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Pillars_of_Eternity_endings for seeing what effects the epilogue? I'm not entirely sure why I got a different Eder and Kana ending this time around.

Edit: Vanilla stuff I didn't notice until this playthrough:

Spoiler

I played a do gooder this time around, and therefore slaughtered the entire doemenel estate when the son asked me to steal something. It's very strange that this is in as an option, and one I'd expect a lot of players to pick, but there's so little followup. They're still around for the trial, I run in to more in Dyrford and for the Valian merchant quest and no one seems to care I killed the local leader. Aside from a random assassin encounter that I suspect was for low rep rather than killing ("You've been making a bad impression with my bosses!"). I mean, if this were the CKs or Dozens, where you can kill them if you want, like with a lot of NPCs, but you never talk your way in to a fight, sure, no impact because it's such an odd thing to do. But I imagine a lot of people play the good guy who doesn't deal with criminals and they will all be wondering why people are treating the family they've been wiping out like a big deal. Also, for the merchant quest, I killed Danna in the inn then she resurrected and fought me again back at the merchants, so that's broken. I guess they were very confident that no one would mess with their fantasy mobsters, or that most people will keep them around because they seem like potential quest givers (that's why I did on my first playthrough).

 

[Darth Roxor]

When I took the plunge in to the endgame pit I got the WOULD YOU LIKE IT TO BE HARD OR FACEROLL popup, which had me excited for different enemy types or more adds with Thaos. Nope. Just a stat buff for Thaos and his two mates as I saw it, didn't even seem to apply to the trash leading up to him. Shame.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

Funny how none of the "gaming magazines" released a review for WM ( I'm talking about Gamespot, Gametrailers, IGN, Eurogamer). If it was something Witcher related or Fallout 4 I'm sure they would be on top.
Steam users are complaining about the WM being to hard

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Concelhaut was definitely too difficult for me, although it was the last thing I did so I couldn't be bothered trying too hard.

After about an hour of failing I ended up just kiting the whole room down the halls until some of the mobs split, then I killed them one by one. Fuck the police.

 

[Starwars]

Rivmusique, about the sigil in Durgan's Battery:

Spoiler

I *think* you place the sigils before you take the soulbound weapons there, it's possible that the sigils turn off some of the traps and shit that spawn when you take the weapon. That's my theory at least as I grabbed the weapon before the sigils

I finished the White March part (haven't been to Cragholdt) of the expansion. My impressions:

-The good encounters are way better than the main game. Some good fun to be had there.
-There is way too much combat all in all I think. Again, too much filler in between the fun encounters. To the point where I felt it fucked up the atmosphere of some of the areas. This is my single biggest complaint and it's a pretty big one for me.
-Even with above complaint, Durgan's Battery was a really cool dungeon I think and bodes well for the future of the game(s). While, again, I feel there is too much combat overall, it had a nice mix of things.
-I thought the original game looked very good but the expansion is simply beautiful. Great work. The areas were laid out nicely also.
-Great new music.
-The companions were cool but felt a bit... short on content. Zahua will have his quest in part 2 so that may change for him. But you can complete the Devil's stuff extremely quickly which is a real shame given that she has a good backstory. Hope it will be expanded upon somehow.
-The story is OK. Not gonna blow anyone's socks off for sure. But it's satisfying. Most of it comes in the form of the Battery itself, which is why that dungeon feels satisfying I suppose. Writing is good overall, the soul-reading stuff I thought was very well done.
-Scripted interactions are improved, quite enjoyable.
-Soulbound weapons are cool and feel special... But the requirements to level them up are fucking stupid and feel gamey. The Grey Sleeper was nice with its riddle-solving. And it would be better if they had spread them out some over the original game as well.
-Just more shit to find overall, hidden or not. It's good.
-You can stealth at least one of the dungeons and have the game react to it, hope there'll be more of that.

I enjoyed it quite a lot overall but yeah... the combat heaviness really took its toll on me. Stuff like the bounties are great fun, but slogging through 'not-really-that-hard-encounters-that-takes-a-lot-of-time-and-resources' was shitty. I might even turn down the difficulty if I replay for some of those areas just to get the amount of time spent in combat down a bit.

 

[Rivmusique]

Rivmusique, about the sigil in Durgan's Battery:

Spoiler

I *think* you place the sigils before you take the soulbound weapons there, it's possible that the sigils turn off some of the traps and shit that spawn when you take the weapon. That's my theory at least as I grabbed the weapon before the sigils

Oh yeah, could be it. I also grabbed it before placing them, can't resist shiny loot.

Reminds me: Traps, locks and some hidden objects Mechanic skill requirements are high in TWM area. I used Durance as my Mech guy on my first playthrough and thought to do the same here. He has no background or class bonuses to it though, and he wastes a few points on other things from the levels I didn't get to decide for him. But that was good enough to disable all traps and open all locks throughout the game. TWM area however, ended up seeing plenty of locks I couldn't pick and path blocking traps I couldn't disable, or even traps I never spotted (even in scouting mode) and just triggered. I had hoped the rogue character would be better, but she'd had points wasted on other shit, so wasn't much of an improvement. When I went back to the area at max level for the big optional boss fight, with the now quite high mechanics (13 maybe?) my characters spotted a fair few hidden objects that got missed first time through. I am aware that I could have retrained one of them to focus solely on Mech, but I was paranoid that using it would lead to some kind of issue (lost points, lingering passive effects that should have been dropped, some kind of xp loss are just some of the issues I expect based on other game experiences with re-spec options) so I just made do. But if you don't want to be tediously handholding your group around traps you can't disarm, noting down chests you need to return to or intentionally tripping traps with high HP characters to progress, make sure you come in with a Mechanics-12ish character, not an (IIRC) 8 like me. Cragholdt also seems to want a somewhat focused Mechanic, with some 15 requirements.

Installed the latest patch and began TWM content on a level 12 character. Save time seems much better, was <10 seconds and that's with a late game save. The "scaled-up" WM content isn't looking so hot. Only done the arrival fight so far, and I remember it being easier than the rest (probably because your team can't go anywhere to rest, didn't try it, but I doubt camping works during the battle), but not THIS easy. Ogres are dropping dead in the opening auto-attack volley, cipher AoE knockdown is setting everyone on their arse for 10+ seconds with no accuracy buff, their cannoneer damage is shit even on robe wearers. Maybe they just didn't touch this part with the scaling.

Anyone having issues with Chanters? I tend not to use them, but when I did Kana's shit in Endless paths, I noticed that the chant wasn't behaving the same way. As I recall, you chose the chant-chain modal you wanted then as soon as combat starts it begins and the auras go out. Now, all of the chant-chains are grayed out when out of combat then when combat initiates there is a cooldown before I can choose one and when selecting it, when Kana was attacking or being attacked usually, it would sometimes just gray out again and no chant would begin. Rarely though, the modal will stay active and chants will start up again in next combat, just like it used too. Deadweight party member just got heavier.

 

[Starwars]

There is something screwed up with the chants at the moment. I don't know what's causing it. I overwrote one of the standard Kana chants with a custom one and it started fucking up where I had to manually activate it each combat and so forth like you say.
For some reason, later in the game, the normal chant he starts with had somehow magically re-appeared alongside my custom one. But now it turned on automatically at the start of combat like it should so... who the hell knows. Some bug I suppose.

Did you respec your character Rivmusique (there is an option in the menu that lets you level up each companion from level 1 when you find them). I used Durance as my mechanics guy also but when leveling up the Devil from start I could push her mechanics higher.

 

[Canus]

So, I loaded up my save file after the latest patch, and all, or basically all, of my characters equipment is gone. One of the characters, Pallegina, is now in their original armor, but all of the weapons and accessories are gone. Some characters have one or two items left but everything else is gone, Aloth has his grimoire but can click to learn the spells in it, all of the soulbound weapons are gone.

I had deleted all of my save files just before noticing this, the load times are terrible and I had been told that deleting a lot of the saves had made them better for a few people. So now I have only one save file and none of my characters have any weapons or armor.
The weird thing is is that I can see all of the item enchantments along the right of the character icons, but when I put something else into the slot the enchantment goes and the item it's off does not reappear.
Anyone else had this?

Turns out a lot of my abilities are gone and my Cipher can no longer bring Focus over 0.

 

[Infinitron]

So, I loaded up my save file after the latest patch, and all, or basically all, of my characters equipment is gone. One of the characters, Pallegina, is now in their original armor, but all of the weapons and accessories are gone. Some characters have one or two items left but everything else is gone, Aloth has his grimoire but can click to learn the spells in it, all of the soulbound weapons are gone.

I had deleted all of my save files just before noticing this, the load times are terrible and I had been told that deleting a lot of the saves had made them better for a few people. So now I have only one save file and none of my characters have any weapons or armor.
The weird thing is is that I can see all of the item enchantments along the right of the character icons, but when I put something else into the slot the enchantment goes and the item it's off does not reappear.
Anyone else had this?

Turns out a lot of my abilities are gone and my Cipher can no longer bring Focus over 0.

It's probably too late now, but if you're using Steam and you ever lose a savegame, ALT-TAB out of the game, terminate the Steam process, exit the game and restart Steam and it'll retrieve your save from the Steam Cloud. Assuming you haven't disabled it.

Anyways, wait for the next patch, this one's a bit fucked up.

 

[Bubbles]

Anyways, wait for the next patch, this one's a bit fucked up.

You could've said that about every patch since March.

 

[Infinitron]

You could've said that about every patch since March.

Hey, stop being so edgy, I see your playtime and I remember your brofists

 

[Bubbles]

I stopped playing when I grew tired of the bugs.

 

[Roguey]

How do you fuck up a patch release when you have patch betas?

 

[Bubbles]

Not enough people playing, not enough people reading the reports, not enough people fixing mid- and low-priority bugs.

 

[Excidium II]

How do you fuck up a patch release when you have patch betas?

Gotta keep their reputation alive.

 

[Excidium II]

Not enough people playing, not enough people reading the reports, not enough people fixing mid- and low-priority bugs.

Well whatever the problem is there, it isn't lack of bug reports or QA staff acknowledging them, the bug reports forum at least used to be p. active when I checked for more lulzy stuff. Lost count of all the things that could possibly break with every save-reload.

I guess their code is just fucked. :rogueyshrug:

 

[Roguey]

Not enough people playing, not enough people reading the reports, not enough people fixing mid- and low-priority bugs.

Hmm. PoE last month: 1,737.6 average 5,917 peak
Wasteland 2 at the equivalent time: 1,070.7 average 2,612 peak (their patching was pretty much done by then and based on my experience it's mostly solid)
D:OS (though not really fair) 1,620.0 average 3,778 peak

Things are bad when inXile did better with fewer.

 

[Rivmusique]

Did you respec your character Rivmusique (there is an option in the menu that lets you level up each companion from level 1 when you find them). I used Durance as my mechanics guy also but when leveling up the Devil from start I could push her mechanics higher.

As I said, I didn't use the retrain option from inns, as I am almost certain it will break something . I was not aware of any option to level companions from 1 on recruitment, will have a look for it next time I play. Though this playthrough is with a high level party and my PC is already Mech focused, so shouldn't have the same issue.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Not enough people playing, not enough people reading the reports, not enough people fixing mid- and low-priority bugs.

Yeah for whatever reason nobody seems play , even out of about a dozen people who I know loved the game, they didn't bother. I fully expect both expansion to bomb financially and Obsidian to go bankrupt shortly after. Okay, maybe not, but its certainly weird. I would guess the "Part 1" is a stay way signal most casual players and mainstream reviewers. So basically just like everybody predicted, apart from marketing geniuses at OE, that is.

 

[Bleed the Man]

Did Obsidian touched the frequency of party banter in some patch (or maybe it was bugged originally)? I'm at Defiance Bay and party banter triggers quite frequently, something I didn't experienced when I first played it. Hell, only about 3 hours doing quests and stuff in the city and I already heard a lot of party banters that never triggered in my first playthrough.

 

[Infinitron]

Josh and Adam interview:

Did Obsidian touched the frequency of party banter in some patch (or maybe it was bugged originally)? I'm at Defiance Bay and party banter triggers quite frequently, something I didn't experienced when I first played it. Hell, only about 3 hours doing quests and stuff in the city and I already heard a lot of party banters that never triggered in my first playthrough.

I remember there was talk about adding more dialogues for the expansion; it's possible they may have upped the frequency as well?

I can't say that I'm noticing that much more in 2.0 (I dunno, maybe a bit more, it's also possible that I'd already heard most of them already) but I haven't installed the expansion yet.

 

[prodigydancer]

Anyways, wait for the next patch, this one's a bit fucked up.

I doubt the game will be in a good condition before TWM2. You can't focus on both making new content and fixing bugs at the same time.

 

[dukeofwhales]

Currently in an expansion area which has a bunch of dudes who are only weak to electricity damage (weak to electricity and corrode damage is a recurring theme in the expansion), and for some reason my AOE lighting spells are bugged and won't cast. All my other spells are fine. Oh boy.

I assume choosing to level scale when you first start the expansion just increases the size of mobs, because some have been huge so far.

 

[LizardWizard]

Currently in an expansion area which has a bunch of dudes who are only weak to electricity damage (weak to electricity and corrode damage is a recurring theme in the expansion), and for some reason my AOE lighting spells are bugged and won't cast. All my other spells are fine. Oh boy.

I assume choosing to level scale when you first start the expansion just increases the size of mobs, because some have been huge so far.

You can grab stormcaller pretty early (snatched it at lvl 5 just have to stealth pull by the tower at the Battery) which is absolutely nuts on a cipher soul shocking. Had Zahua running swift lightning strikes, Gremlin with return storm and everything is dying in seconds on POTD.