Category: crpg

Pillars of Eternity Character Creation: Adonan, Aumaua Fighter and Quoril Yogsword, Pale Elf Priest

Hi guys and gals!

So, as we wrote earlier, Kevaver will be joined by his friends, a concept custom party designed for Path of the Damned (which will hopefully fare well, as this is a mostly blind Playthrough).

And to create the “basic” group, we chose two of his friends to join him early. Adonan, a tough Aumaua Fighter and Quoril Yogsword, a Pale Elf Priest of Magran.

So first, Adonan:

Race: Aumaua – Many enemies in the frontline have stun or knockdown abilities. The Coastal Aumaua ability (resistant to these abilities) is excellent against that! This enables him to better control the combat himself (and to take fewer hits of course).

Might 13
We want some Might, but he’s not a damage dealer, so we won’t spend too much on it. 13 is a pretty OK value getting a nice Fort save as well.

Constitution 18 (+1 = 19, from Rauatai)
He’s a tank. He has to have many hitpoints. And Fortitude save is the most important save for tanks too, they can take the Reflex save based Area Damage no Problem. But failing your Fortitude save will bring you in trouble as many melee opponents have abilities just against that save.

Dexterity 12
Dexterity isn’t crucial for a good tank, but it’s just so good generally. We just have to take it to bring down cooldowns and recovery times a bit.

Perception 13
On Hard we would dump this stat, as we wouldn’t have a problem hitting enemies anyways. On Path of the Damned, if your Perception is too low, you will have problems with anything combat related (if you’re not only buffing / healing). So, a compromise.

Intellect 3
The only ability we can afford to dump. It’s not crucial for a tank even though it wouldn’t hurt either. But many effects and abilities of the tank are instant and have to do with doing engage / disengages. Intellect won’t help there much. We are bleeding on the defensive Auras though, but sometimes, we have to make sacrifices for a gain elsewhere.

Resolve 18
We are playing a tank. He should have good deflection. This helps. It’s rather useless for a non-tank though.

 

Second, Quoril Yogsword

Race: Pale Elf. He is more resistant to elemental damage now which can be a problem even in the back row (think Fireballs or spells in general). This will help him, as he has that super low Constitution…

Might 18
We want our spells and abilites to be as strong as possible. We want to do damage too, if using weapons. This is giving us the power. What we sacrifice is..

Constitution 3
Our priest is mainly a buff / debuff character with ranged attacks. So we don’t ever want him to be under attack. He’d be dead then with Con 10 as well, so no point in going for more than the minimum. We’ll have to be careful with him though, as there are many archers and other ranged opponents in Pillars of Eternity.

Dexterity 19
Now how great is quick spellcasting, quick attacks and quick recovery time? Speed has, in most RPGs, been a crucial ability for spellcasters and, of course, healers. Pillars is no exception.

Perception 9  (10 with The White that Wends)
Not that good but not too bad either. We want to be able to hit things when debuffed. Or we want to debuff them. Buffs are more important still, but we won’t cripple our Perception totally. That would be neither helpful nor needed.

Intelligence 18
Just nice to have. A good area for the area spells and longer lasting buffs. Maxing that is mandatory.

Resolve 10
We won’t dump that as for a healer, some help with concentration can be crucial. But we won’t boost it too. As it’s really a tank stat.

 

Alright, I’m out – see you on YouTube in the Playthrough!

Have fun gaming,

Immanuel-Can

 

 

 

 

Pillars of Eternity, Path of the Damned, Creating our Main Character

Hi friends!

We had started a PoE Playthrough, but it was on Hard. And “Hard” was just too easy. So, we’re starting on Path of the Damned now. With a main character that should be effective, and interesting to play from a tactical and a roleplaying point of view! With a view to playing even to the second part of the White March Expansion 🙂
The first Episode is currently being rendered and we’re uploading it today on the Thoughtful Gaming Youtube Channel.

Creating a Character optimized for Combat and Exploration

So, I was thinking about a Rogue – an intriguing character with the bonus to give us a good start as well – as we won’t miss a chest with such a master in mechanics. We do want a Death Godlike, for the damage bonus on enemies on their last 25% endurance. That’s when, in my experience, most enemies will trigger special abilities too, and that’s also a critical time to do damage, for example to stop that last heal the opponent is casting and to kill him right then!

So, Death Godlike Rogue it is. What about our attributes?

Might 13
That is not too shabby here, even though the interface wants us to bring this up further. But I’d rather have the flexibility of Dexterity for massive cooldown reduction or the precision of Perception which we will need on the highest difficulty just to be able to hit things reliably.

Constitution 10
We don’t want that too high, as we won’t be a tank, but being a melee character, we cannot afford to dump this stat.

Dexterity 19 (20 with Deathfire Archipelago)
To preserve our flexibility and to give us the best opportunities. Dex is so good because it raises damage by attack speed, and it also reduces any cooldown, so it’s also great for abilities, or even reloading times. Just a great stat, even more so for ranged characters, but also for us and for some synergy with Perception and its interrupt bonus.

Perception 18
We want to be able to hit things reliably on Path of the Damned difficulty. We are fighting with two weapons, delivering great damage by that (also from the enchantments) and we want them to hit as often as possible. And interruption is a great ability for a second row melee character like a rogue. We want to be able to stop things. Now we can.

Intelligence 14
We have good abilities and want to improve them a bit. Intelligence 14 is good enough for that. We’re getting attack bonuses from our abilities, so this will improve our damage more than more Points in Might. Or so we hope.

Resolve 3
Well, we just have to dump one stat. We won’t play a tank, so we’re going to suffer against melee heavy opponents attacking us, but we will use our abilities to pummel their damage, so we won’t need too much Resolve. The will save is a pity, but no risk, no reward. And we want that reward from offensive attribute points!

We want the Blinding as our first ability as I think it’s extremely powerful, and is based on the Reflex save as well, instead of the Fortitude save, so we have a chance to blind even strong melee attackers (which usually have high Fort / lower Reflex save). It’s a protection against the hardest opponents for Kevaver, really. Making them slower won’t help there as we don’t want to be a ranged attacker and don’t want to kite.

And we want him to be from the Deadfire Archipelago, for Dexterity +1, and Roleplaying fun (a seafarer seems to be always an entertaining backstory).

 

Roleplaying Aspects (how will we play our Rogue in the story of Pillars of Eternity)

The old Wizards of the Coast name generator gave him the name Kevaver Forgedawn. And I’m going to go with that. It’s an elven oriented name and has a nice, gothic touch to it. I’m sure there are better names though, but also many worse.

Kevaver’s alignment, in a Dungeons and Dragons sense, should be somewhere around Chaotic Neutral, with a tendency to good. He’s got a weak spot for people sharing his fate a bit, outcasts of society. He had to endure quite a bit because of his appalling looks when he was young and, reacting to discrimination, has had his share of mainstream racism and disadvantages by local authorities. He despises authority and has a secret love for anarchy. He’s a Drifter (+1 Mechanics, +1 Stealth) which also helps him as a group utility character.

He’s a bit of a romantic, and gothic Anti-Hero, though not so much as to reduce his effectiveness much. He has acquired a circle of friends, the only ones he believes he can trust, and wants to pay for their travelling to him to help him on the adventure. (We want to create a custom group, as there are enough playthroughs with the characters from the developers.) So stay tuned for other interesting characters we will create (or, in character, re-acquire). We want a bit of freshness too, and we have quite a nice bunch of fellows prepared for the adventure.

What we still need though is a name for our group of adventurers. Are they the “Renegades of Punk”? The “Masterminds of Madness”? Even the “Freedom Fighters and Friends”? What would you call them?

Have fun gaming,

see you!

Immanuel-Can

Kevaver Forgedawn

 

#Wizardry8 #Shredder #Speedrun #13 : Arnika, City of Angel Tongues

…where we return to Arnika with our bounty and Silver, the Mook ranger, gets invited over to the Mook embassy for a night (of scientific scrabble orgies probably, judging from Mook character), we also speak to a spaceship called Callisto – and we begin our way to Trynton.
Featuring many fights against plants like Acidvines and Crimson Poppies, as well as all sorts of Higardi Rogues. Such Loot (the Rogues), so money 😉
Have fun watching!
Happy Gaming,

Immanuel-Can

#Wizardry8 #Gadgeteer : Bullet rain and strange inventions

Our last party member will be a Gadgeteer: She has close to no damage in the early game but reigns supreme late with a rain of bullets. And everything can be used as a bullet at that time. The Gadgeteer has a gun which levels up with her and in the late game can use almost anything you find as a projectile. A shame we don’t find pianos in Wizardry 8, but still… In addition to that, the gun gets lots of special effects like blind or kill.

So you will have a real monster late game. Unfortunately, she doesn’t provide much damage in the earlier stages. But the topic she provides until then is utility: Lots of it. You can build gadgets en masse with the gadgeteer – all kinds of strange items. Which is tons of fun and will give you e.g.: a Jack in The Box for fear effects or, my favourite – a machine giving you a sort of a “radar” buff which is very good to avoid – or enter – encounters. And then she can pick locks – which is extremely useful throughout the game. So she does have a Jack in The Box but she is a Jack of All Trades for everything else – except DPS, which comes very late, but then with BOOM!

The Gadgeteer uses her gun as the main source of damage – which is a modern weapon. The gun won’t get a bonus from Strength, so we’ll have a slightly different build for the gadgeteer.

Senses (For the Eagle Eye Armor Penetration goodness) > Speed (more attacks) > Dexterity (more to-hit) > Vitality (more Stamina, and of course HP).

We will use a Hobbit again for her excellent combat stats – the low Strength and Piety don’t interest us. And she will get a stamina regen item of the early ones – so we will be quickly up to speed again after a fight.

gadgeteer-hobbit

Her skills are pretty straightforward: Engineering (her special skill), Modern Weapon (her key skill) and Locks and Traps (so useful). Once Modern Weapon has a high skill (like 50-something) it makes sense to raise Ranged Combat instead as it will level to max without the need to put points into it. Our bullet rain can begin!

gadgeteer-combatskills

And apart from all that stuff she has grown up as a scientist-gone-adventurer. A mechanical genius meets Indiana Jones. A tough girl not afraid of dangerous experiments to reach her goals. As a mix of Marie Curie and the dangerous May Day.

gadgeteer-character

Don’t mess with her. Until you want to be soaked. By a rain of bullets!

This is the final member of the cast, the mysterious number 6.

See you next time for the beginning of our journey and more – real – videos 🙂

Happy gaming,

Immanuel-Can

#Wizardry8 – building our #Bard : the day the music(ian) killed

Who doesn’t want some music? Some use Spotify, some use Pandora, some use Apple Music or Google Play. We won’t. We shun all these wimps. We choose a bard: The prime difference being that what on earth can you kill with Spotify et al.? Nothing. What can you kill with a Wizardry 8 Bard? Quite some things! And you get her music for free.

Our Bard will also be a melee combatant, but with nice buffs and some area DPS at the beginning. Bards are getting quite nice items, that will help with their lower range of combat skills and weapons. And we will make use of the many instruments lying around practically everywhere in Wizardry 8.

Building the melee bard is practically doing the same thing we already did with Monk / Samurai / Valkyrie: Rising Strength > Speed > Dexterity > Vitality. But there is a difference this time. We are going to use a Lizard-Woman for the job. Why? We won’t ever need magic and Lizards have pretty sexy combat stats (very high Vitality and Strength) – so, no bonus points at the start. But pretty nice numbers all around:

bard-lizardman

We will have to get rid of the negative points first before we can put some points into the precious melee stats. But that’s no problem as our bard is built to fit nicely into a party where Conan would be just one of the guys, you know.

For skills, we are going to put points into Music, Communication and Artifacts. The good combat skills will have to be earned by practice and our nice attributes. Artifacts is pretty helpful for early identification of items, Music is the core skill of the Bard – his instruments – and communication will help massively with shop prices. Something that helps really much in the beginning. Less farming needed for more items. Go, my charming Iguanodon!

bard-combatskills

Iguanodon? You already knew that’s the guy from the featured image. They are rumored to having sung songs as one of the fewer dinosaur species. What a nice Lizard-Girl in the choir:

bard-character

Kindly, I will leave for today. We will meet again soon though, presenting our 6th member of the infamous party.

Happy gaming!

Immanuel-Can

Skyrocketing #Wizardry8 #DPS with a #Dwarven #Valkyrie !

You could guess I only want a divine character as a healer. Or for the precious buffs. Resurrections. No – DPS is also great for the Valkyrie, especially to bridge the midgame. But also because she is specialized in Polearms. And there are some pretty good polearm weapons late in the game.

As with the previous melee characters (Monk and Samurai) our ability priority will be Strength (melee damage and armor penetration final skill) > Speed (number of attacks and initiative) > Dexterity (to hit and AC) > Vitality (hit points in melee are never bad).

You can always argue that Senses or Intelligence are listed under combat skills but they only make you learn the skills a little faster – their endgame final skills (unlocked after you reach 100 Senses or Intelligence) are pretty much useless for a melee character, so we are ignoring these on purpose.

So let’s make our girl strong, quick and dextrous – who wouldn’t want such a bodyguard girlfriend? (especially as a stereotypical nerd 😀 )

valkyrie-dwarf

And she’s a dwarf, too. The damage resistance is always cool for a melee character and the piety won’t hurt for some nice extra heals (piety raises spellpoints and stamina).

Combat skills are pretty straightforward, too: Polearm and Close Combat. We won’t need more. For some ranged damage, if we really happen to get two Tripleshot Crossbows, we’ll put the rest of the points into them (Level 5 upwards these points will go into spellcasting).

valkyrie-combatskills

Her name is gonna be Brunhilda after her famous namesake from the Nibelungenlied whose combat skills were so legendary that she could even wrestle with the uber-strong Dragon Slayer Siegfried.

Yes, another aggressive character. But what are you going to do in combat? Bake bread and pick flowers?

valkyrie-character

Better pick up some kills. Yes Madam. She won’t have a problem with that.

See you soon for party member 5! Happy gaming,

Immanuel-Can

#Wizardry8 : Building an effective #DPS #Ranger

After having built the core style components of our team (SHREDDER THEM!), let’s go to a class you definitely do want in your party. The ranger. He can scout automatically which is a big bonus and has high quality of life. I’d recommend the ranger to every new player’s party of Wizardry 8 just because you will not have to turn “Scouting” on and off. And even if you know the location of every hidden item it’s still really tedious if you don’t have a ranger.

So, take one. There’s no doubt: He’s useful. He can heal a bit, and teleport too in high levels. Can mix potions with his alchemy skill.

And he does tons of damage in the late game, and is still pretty OK early. If you build him right.

In order to achieve a non-balanced offensive ranger with high ranged damage, we are going to buy points in the following priority: Senses (for the final skill Eagle Eye, recommended for late game ranged damage) > Strength (for additional ranged damage and the eventual melee encounter) > Speed (for additional attacks) > Dexterity (for better to-hit and a quality of life Armor Class final skill later).

One of the best, if not the best ranger is a Mook: He has most bonus points, and is even one size category larger than the other choices, so he will have access to a nice late game sword: The Giant’s Sword, with extended range – furthering his DPS role even if the enemies come close.

ranger-mook

The skill category is pretty straightforward: We want him to kill with ranged weapons – bows. A crossbow, and hopefully a tripleshot crossbow later will be our favored weapon. Additional points are spent for scouting, so we won’t miss items.

ranger-combatskills

For his Gorillalike looks, I have baptised our furry ranger Silverback, in short: Silver. Whatever comes his way, he will drop them like flies.

ranger-character

Bonus points for recognizing the Statue up above I used as a featured image 🙂

Happy gaming! See you,

Immanuel-Can

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