Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity

[Sir Slash]

If you hover the cursor over your character during combat, you can see the damage being done and status. This game continues to impress me. After completing the ruins as an Easy/ Fighter, I went back and started over again as a Normal/ Paladin. The combat was quite a bit harder but not brutal, with different creatures encountered, some new dialog choices( because of different skills) and loot, and the most surprising thing was, SPOILER ALERT: after the camp fight, the Rouge was badly injured and needed to rest. The female fighter was against this and they went back and forth until I made the call to camp to let the little guy heal and afterward she ran-off and left us. WTF? And took our waterskins with her. Fortunately they were recoverable later but I had to complete the ruins with just me and the Rouge. Tough. Love the Scout/Stealth option.

[Rayfer]

If you hover the cursor over your character during combat, you can see the damage being done and status. This game continues to impress me. After completing the ruins as an Easy/ Fighter, I went back and started over again as a Normal/ Paladin. The combat was quite a bit harder but not brutal, with different creatures encountered, some new dialog choices( because of different skills) and loot, and the most surprising thing was, SPOILER ALERT: after the camp fight, the Rouge was badly injured and needed to rest. The female fighter was against this and they went back and forth until I made the call to camp to let the little guy heal and afterward she ran-off and left us. WTF? And took our waterskins with her. Fortunately they were recoverable later but I had to complete the ruins with just me and the Rouge. Tough. Love the Scout/Stealth option.

Continued SPOILER ALERT: This happened in my game too, playing on easy as a ranger. I came upon her dead body in that central circle with the glowing runes puzzle and got all her equipment.  I still can't figure out why it won't let you cast a healing scroll after combat....only works during combat?

[panzerde]

Continued SPOILER ALERT: This happened in my game too, playing on easy as a ranger. I came upon her dead body in that central circle with the glowing runes puzzle and got all her equipment.  I still can't figure out why it won't let you cast a healing scroll after combat....only works during combat?

There are skills that perform what in other games a healing scroll will do, and I believe you can use potions outside of combat. I had the chanter pick up a skill called "triage" or "battlefield triage." and it works to restore health during non-combat situations. I think scrolls are all strictly combat.

[Sir Slash]

That's no bear. That's a Space Station!!! Got my ass handed to me in about 10 sec. Had to try him out though. He is pretty. The red from my blood goes very well with his brown fur.

[panzerde]

I think Pillars is heading for the same unplayed pile along with Divinity and Wasteland 2. Maybe it just that I suck at these games. But they always go the same; I really enjoy it for awhile, then I just run into a brick wall, and go from challenging but beatable fights, to being 2-3 shot by whatever I'm fighting.

Note that I say this with no intention of dissing you - but if you're running into this across all three of those games, then yes, you're probably doing something wrong. It may be an issue with how you're allocating skills to your characters, such that they aren't keeping up with the difficulty ramp of new areas. Or, it might be that you aren't grasping the best ways to use the different classes in your party, or your tactics aren't working and you need a different approach to the fight. Finally, in some games, you might just have run into an area that you aren't ready for and you need to go do something else, first.

Certainly I run into fights where I get a party wipe - that's part of the game. When that happens I stop and think about the encounter and what caused me to get overwhelmed so quickly. In the case of Pillars, a couple of thoughts:

First, make sure you are pausing during combat. Don't just let the combat run and try and give orders on the fly. Once you get your head around things and have a tweaked out party you might get away with playing combats on slow mode, but for now, the space bar is your friend.

Crowd control is essential. Use your casters to slow, stop, daze, and misdirect enemies so you don't have to fight all of the at once. Look for places like doors that you can use to channel enemies. Use the knockdown ability of fighters to get free strikes in at powerful but suddenly prone enemies.

Buff your party - Use your priest to cast Holy Aura and spells like Bless that make your party much more effective. Sleep in Inns that provide long-lasting buffs that aid combat.

Debuff the enemy - Your casters have useful Area of Effect (AoE) spells that make the enemy weaker or more susceptible to damage. Strip them of Damage Resistance, decrease Might, or, one of my favorites, hit them with Combustible Wounds!

Avoid getting your casters locked in melee. Look for the arrows joining the little circle around the base of your guy to the base of an enemy - that means they're in melee. If so, use something like a knockdown or a spell that breaks the melee and disengage that caster.

Apologies if you're already doing the above, those are just some things I've found that help with combat in the game I thought might be useful to someone.

[mikeck]

Go in, talk to the bartender and ask if there are any adventurers for hire.  Spend the money and create one.

Thanks!

[Swatter]

Being one that really sung the praises of the game, there are encounters early on that are crazy hard. This game doesn't ease into the hard stuff, its going to hit you very soon. I am personally not one overly fond of restarting 1,000 times. I am not either overly fond of games that do not smoothly scale difficulty.

Being a person who thought BG 2 and ToB were the best games ever made, this game is much harder to get into (at least for me). I think the game itself is stunning, but the encounter design (at least early on for a few encounters) is poor. Don't get me wrong, BG2 and ToB had some crazy hard battles, but they were scaled into in such a way you were prepared for most encounters as you progressed. In PoE, be prepared to learn by restarting a bunch of times.

I am going to restart with min/max in mind, but first part of the game is really starting to turn me off. I tend to have a temper and so I steer away from overly frustrating games (life experience kicking in). My experiences with the last few games I have played has been so smooth, its getting hard to justify the frustration in PoE.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I found that you just have to go where the game wants you to go.  It's not going to explicitly say "you can't go here yet" but it will beat you up if you don't follow the general path of the story arc and try to go to an area that the main quest storyline isn't nudging you towards.

 

[mikeck]

Being one that really sung the praises of the game, there are encounters early on that are crazy hard. This game doesn't ease into the hard stuff, its going to hit you very soon. I am personally not one overly fond of restarting 1,000 times. I am not either overly fond of games that do not smoothly scale difficulty.

Being a person who thought BG 2 and ToB were the best games ever made, this game is much harder to get into (at least for me). I think the game itself is stunning, but the encounter design (at least early on for a few encounters) is poor. Don't get me wrong, BG2 and ToB had some crazy hard battles, but they were scaled into in such a way you were prepared for most encounters as you progressed. In PoE, be prepared to learn by restarting a bunch of times.

I am going to restart with min/max in mind, but first part of the game is really starting to turn me off. I tend to have a temper and so I steer away from overly frustrating games (life experience kicking in). My experiences with the last few games I have played has been so smooth, its getting hard to justify the frustration in PoE.

I actually didn't find the initial combat to be that difficult. I will say that I started as a fighter which is always easier than other wizard or chanter or something. Also set the game to easy for some of the more difficult and counter so I can get through them. I like a challenge but I don't want to have to beat my head against the wall for three hours trying to get past one monster

[Swatter]

You know, I don't mind getting my butt kicked, but some games really press my buttons. 

[Rayfer]

You know, I don't mind getting my butt kicked, but some games really press my buttons. 

To me, games like this are more enjoyable when played on the 'easy' setting. You get to enjoy the unfolding story (and this one is incredibly deep so far) without the frustration of frequent deaths and reloads. I'm doing it with this game and by building a party with prebuilt npc's and ones I built in the first inn....I'm surviving quite well. Games like this are more about the story and less about the combat....at least to me they are. Others post in these forums who prefer the challenge of the higher difficulty settings and enjoy that experience as much as I enjoy playing on easy. There is no right or wrong way...just have fun.

[panzerde]

To me, games like this are more enjoyable when played on the 'easy' setting. You get to enjoy the unfolding story (and this one is incredibly deep so far) without the frustration of frequent deaths and reloads. I'm doing it with this game and by building a party with prebuilt npc's and ones I built in the first inn....I'm surviving quite well. Games like this are more about the story and less about the combat....at least to me they are. Others post in these forums who prefer the challenge of the higher difficulty settings and enjoy that experience as much as I enjoy playing on easy. There is no right or wrong way...just have fun.

Excellent point. I'm much more interested in the story of the game than I am min-maxing a set of characters to take the game on at its hardest setting - but there's nothing wrong with it if that's what someone else wants to do. I'm playing on Normal right now, but that's not to say I won't slip down to Easy if the fights are getting in the way of me enjoying the story.

Because this does have a deep and interesting story. Too few RPGs these days scratch that itch for me like BG, BG2, and NWN 2 did. Fortunately Obsidian built a game here that you can have fun with from many different approaches.

[Steelgrave]

Go in, talk to the bartender and ask if there are any adventurers for hire.  Spend the money and create one.

My screen says "no adventurers available" and is otherwise blank 

Ok, I had forgotten to level up. Doing so gave me the option to recruit. All better now.

[Swatter]

You all are right, of course :)

[Bison]

You all are right, of course :)

I love these games, but until I find the right mix of auto pause during battles I struggle to control my tactics because there is a lot going on especially as you add more characters to your party.