I didn't have much time for gaming stuff today - only about 30 minutes, very near the end of my day.
I spent all of it playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker.
I'm getting a bit more of a hang of the game. I had to, in the end, restart, and make a slightly different character to better fit what I needed long-term and short-term.
I also found I hadn't given enough thought to the development of my companions. I spent a bit of time reading about builds and feats and class level benefits. So where I'd just leveled up a fighter companion as a fighter, I instead leveled her up as a Rogue so I could get Sneak Attacks when she fought side-by-side with a friend. I knew what the benefit of "stances" were for barbarians, so I chose a stance instead of a different feat for my barbarian. And so on.
A few things still get me:
- the maddening frustration at guys who have a 3 to hit and miss 4 times out of 5.
- dealing with fear spells, which usually take out my best guys pretty quickly.
- optimizing healing. I won a single fight with a lot of potions but then rested 12 hours with casters with lots of healing and still ended up wounded badly. Okay, fine, but I have no idea if that's normal or bad rolls.
- a tiny, tiny, tiny event log window that scrolls most of what I want to see up before I can find it, and a very fast scroll speed on it so I can't just go up a little bit.
- PC names covering up die rolls.
- trees blocking my vision to my combatants.
- and making sense of the use of recipes. Okay, I can learn to cook with all of these bits I find, but it doesn't count as food?
Overall, still having fun, but it feels like I'm wasting a lot of time recovering from getting mauled and in traveling, without a good plan of where to go next. I just guess at what's a safe side mission. Last time around, I guessed wrong twice in a row and ended up with lots of bad stuff as a result.
Still fun. A little frustrating on the interface.
There are some excellent companion builds here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/companion_builds/page1
and main character builds:
https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/roahins_main_character_builds/page1
(Both contain minor spoilers, but nothing game-ruining)
The healing is bizarre. I don't know if it's a pathfinder thing, or just this game, but it feels like healing spells are tremendously underpowered. My solution is just to buy all the cure light wounds potions and chug them down between fights.
They feel anemic when you're healing 4-11 points on HP 30 characters who get pounded down pretty badly, that's for sure!
DeleteThanks for the links.
I suggest Divinity Original Sin 2 next!
ReplyDeleteIf they give it away for free, sure!
DeleteOne thing that has generally worked for me is making the tower shield specialist into the tankiest tank possible and using bows from behind her to snipe the enemy in priority order. Yes the barb companion does more damage in melee but she takes a lot more too.
ReplyDeleteBoss fights are different - they generally have a big enough to hit that you want everyone all in.
You use a lot less healing that way.
I went for making Valerie a tank, but not so much on the missile fire. Way too often I find enemies running past her, or coming from multiple sides, so I can't just let them swing at her with a 20 to hit and murder them with bows. I might not be positioning myself correct for that.
DeleteMake sure you have the camping option to "spend remaining healing" checked. For some reason when I started playing, it defaulted to off. However, I was also pretty generous with using my heals to keep people at least 2/3 on HP. Thankfully, discovered that option fairly early on.
ReplyDeleteAs BejaminWashinton mentioned, heal potions are another valuable tool. I'd keep a couple in each character's potion belt. CLW potions are another great way to top up. I also liked having at least 1 larger potion in the belt of my front-line guys for a quick, in-combat top-off when the healer was otherwise occupied.
Another tidbit is that some divine spellcasters (mostly clerics) can spontaneously convert another memorized spell into a cure spell of the same level. I didn't discover that until about a third of the way into the game and that was a game-changer for me. Before I was memorizing lots of cure spells and few buff/utility/combat spells, but afterwards, I had a plethora of options that helped out during combat.
A lot of the healing spells does come down to rolls though. CLW is 1d8 + lvl (max 5) and the dice and maximum basically double as you step up. If the dice don't go your way for a particular heal spell, it can really ruin your day especially if it happens during combat.
I've been using the "spend remaining healing" option - even so, it's not especially helpful in getting people back to solid HP. The CLW potions are critical, and I've been using them very often. The spontaneous conversion I knew - and if you list a bunch of spells on your action list, it's really obvious that using one CLW spell removes a same-level casting of another spell. Even so, you're right - it's down to rolls.
DeleteDivinity: Original Sin 2 *is* fun, but man can it be maddening--some of the fights are just ridiculous. I've got over 100 hours into this game, closing in on the end, and there's cool aspects to it, but some of the fights take *so* long, and can be so unbalanced...ugh. There are times when I have to just take a break because I'm not super-interested in spending 1-2 hours saving and reloading as I try to overcome a crazy hard fight.
ReplyDelete