It's Dick Casablancas from Veronica Mars!

I am getting near the end of Act II, and things are going really well. The fights have gotten easier. I think I was biting off more than I could chew by trying to tackle the Endless Depths of Od Nua so early. I have not had a party member get knocked out in long time, or even take a quarter of their health in damage. My trick of giving everyone a missile weapon and concentrating all their fire on a single target at the start of combat almost always kills said bad guy instantly. Which really helps with enemy spellcasters.

Speaking of spellcasters, mine have just reached Level 9, which means 1st Level spells are now castable per encounter, rather than per rest. Serana has been a beast with Minoletta's Minor Missiles, and Lucia with Barbs of Condemnation.

I think once I finish up Act II, I might take another crack at Od Nua, and try out the new areas in The White March.

The Deadwalkers find another Engwithan machine

Deadwalkers by runelight

Your team looks great! Still love the little cat. Good to hear that the fights seems a little better now.

It sounds like magic use has been improved. Have the enemy mages been toned down at all? I recall from BG days that your mage had to be totally devoted to anti-mage operations, else your team would end up getting charmed/confused/dazed and attacking each other. I remember quite a few reloads when things got to that point.

Enemy mages are not nearly as bad as they were in BG2. I know exactly what you are talking about, with needing special spells to break enemy mage's defenses and the like. It is not unusual for many of the party to suffer debuffs like Dazed, Hobbled, Stunned, Paralyzed etc.. But the durations are rarely more than 3-5 seconds. Nothing like being frozen for over a minute while the baddies all hammer away at you like they did in the Baldur's games.

To be honest, I mostly just ignore the hostile debuffs. But the Priest class does have a Suppress Affliction spell that suspends all hostile effects you can use. The same spell turns up in some magic items too. Plus the Priest has other good talents and spells to resist enemy debuffs. So resisting them is not that difficult.

Deadwalker by runelight is a great shot, I love the cat's eyes.

Following in SubRosa's footsteps, I'm beginning to create my own party instead of relying just on vanilla companions.

In Gilded Vale, Mitya met his old friend from many adventures, a dwarven rogue named Ballat and they joined forces. Mitya isn't good at all with picking locks, disarming traps and being stealthy, so Ballat will come in handy in above-mentioned actions and even more - acting as a shock troop, luring enemies to Mitya or by setting traps. I'll probably add some vanilla companions as well with time to make the party more diverse.

The vanilla companions add more quests to the game, and of course have unique voices and dialogue. I still want to try a playthrough of the entire game with only them. But I like the create-your-own Adventurers quite a bit. If I didn't already have such clearly defined personalities from previous games they would probably feel bland. But Darryl, Serana, and co are such a part of Persephone's death that bringing them into another game just feels natural.

Ballat looks like one of the dwarves from The Hobbit!

I started the White March today. Here is an important safety tip - akin to not crossing the streams - do not go to Cragholdt Bluffs! I thought it was the first territory you had to go through in the new area added by the dlc. It is filled with mercenary titans who alternately teleport or fall out of the sky onto you. Only using the healparty command have I been able to survive the battles with them.

Now I found that this area is recommended for characters Level 13 and up! With 14 being the highest level in the game I believe. The regular White March area is behind Cragholdt on the area map. Take Note.

So I backtracked and went there. The game said I was higher level than expected for the content, and offered to increase the difficulty. With the butt-whooping from Cragholdt still fresh in my mind (and rear), I said no thanks, leave that difficulty where it is!

Okay, so I went to the beginning of the regular White March area - Stalwart Village. All I could think was Welcome to Icewind Dale! The wintery mountains really conjure up the feel of the old IWD games. They even added in a frost effect for the character's breath.

Thankfully, the baddies are not nearly as bad as they were in Cragholdt Bluffs. So far the Deadwalkers have fought off an ogre attack on Stalwart. It begins immediately upon your arrival. So you cannot save until you defeat the first group of ogres. Afterward the team got the lay of the land from the locals, and had the opportunity to rescue two people from a burning building. Sadly, Persephone was only able to get one of them out (it is sort of a Choose-Your-Adventure style text sequence, and is heavily based upon your skills, attributes, background, and even spells if you have them).

So far it is really good. I am loving the White March.

The White March sounds and looks awesome, I like almost anything happening in snowy areas.


In my case it gives characters more depth, as I imagine they had some adventures before events in Pillars of Eternity and they're more "connected" among themselves since they know each other from before.

In any case, Mitya and Ballat teamed up with Eder and now they're traveling to Anslog's Compass, to help Aufra, the sister of Calisca from the caravan. In Magran's Fork they came upon Durance who offered them assistance but Mitya refused his help. Something about the fire-loving priest didn't seem right.

I have done some more exploring into the White March. The new game world has it locations set up in a diamond-like shape. You enter at Stalwart Village at the bottom of the diamond. Then to the east is Longwatch Falls, and to the west is Russetwood. Finally Durgan's Battery - the final area - is to the north.

After defending Stalwart Village from the ogres I went east to Longwatch Falls. I am disappointed to report that the enemies there are all very overpowered. Nearly every one either paraylzes or petrifies with every hit they land on you. There is a 5th level Priest spell called Prayer Against Imprisonment which can protect you from the paralysis. So you have to be at least 9th level before you go there (to get 5th level spells), and your Priest needs to cast this before every fight. That means a lot of resting since you only get two 5th level spell castings per rest at 9th level, and three at 10th level.

There is also an Ice Dragon in Longwatch. But you only meet him if you go down in his cave. With the right stats you can talk your way through the encounter as well, rather than fight him and his army of ice blights. I did the latter, as I was sick and tired of overpowered enemies by then.

West of Stalwart Village was a lot nicer. Russetwood was mostly filled with wolves, ice trolls, and ice blights, plus one group of undead. So no constant paralysis attacks. The whole area went very well, and I only rested once, after clearing out the entire surface area and venturing down into the ogre cave. I left off just inside the ogre cave, so I am not sure how that will go, or what Durgan's Battery will be like yet.

I remember basilisks from original Baldur's Gate, they were one of the rare creatures, able to petrify you, but fortunately they weren't common. But if almost every enemy can petrify you...

...I wish that you could avoid fighting some dragons in Skyrim via dialogue options too. IIRC, in Baldur's Gate it was possible to avoid all dragon battles except the one at the very end of the game, in the Elven settlement. And there were two more dragons in Throne of Bhaal which you had to fight as well.

--

Mitya, Ballat and Eder are currently camping outside Raedric's castle, waiting for nightfall to sneak in the castle, most probably during the sewers. Mitya was awakened by Eder who said that he was shaking in sleep and that he had problems waking him up. This happened for the first time although Eder has been a member of every party of mine so far, so I'm not sure what's the trigger. Perhaps it was caused because Mitya talked to him two nights ago and Eder revealed some of his past.

Here is the trio camping some night ago at Ranga's Camp in Anslong's Compass. Mitya has a new tricorn hat.

Here's the trio fighting wichts in Esternwood. Ballat just killed one wicht with his fine arbalest while Mitya and Eder are about to attack the second one.

Mitya, Ballat and Eder managed to end Raedric's reign of terror. Mitya and Eder went to talk to Raedric while Ballat stayed behind, hidden in shadows, his pistol ready, BTW, we found the pistol in Raedric's castle. As soon as the battle started, the trio concentrated on Raedric's Archmage, Ballat's sneaky shot did most of the damage and Mitya's Flames of Devotion finished him off. Afterwards the trio focused on Raedric but surprisingly he didn't last very long. The rest of his bodyguards weren't so difficult to bring down either.

Wow, three against Raedric and his thugs is amazing! I barely survived the two times I did it with parties of five characters.

I had troubles before as I said earlier in this thread, even with a party of four. I think that the Archmage was a source of the problem that's why this time I concentrated on him.

I'm about to play now and see if the tree in Gilded Vale has "changed" with Raedric gone. Then it's off to Caed Nua.

Ice Troll

Deadwalkers vs Ice Trolls (Serana is maneuvering around the flank to use her Ray of Fire on the trolls).

The same without the ui

Exploring the White March

Caed Nua was attacked by an undead horde

SubRosa, those are some great action shots. Your Deadwalkers look really good. And those ice trolls look like quite well done monsters.

Glad to see Serana maneuvering to sweep fire through all three trolls with no friendly fire.

I finished up White March today, except for Cragoholdt. The final area was Durgan's Battery, which has a large exterior area, and the actual dwarven fortress with two interior levels. In the exterior is Galvino's Workshop, which is another interior area. So there is lots to do in just that final section.

It all went well, I ran across a few Laugerfeth's near the entrance of the Battery, but Sofie was ready for them with her Prayer Against Imprisonment, so no one was paralyzed. The interior had a few big fights, but nothing I could not handle. The final big fight in front of the White Forge got so busy the game got slow and choppy. That is the first time I ever had performance issues with the game. I think it was just too much stuff going on, and too many fancy fx, for the game engine to handle.

Now the Deadwalkers have returned to Caed Nua, where I have also finished the final piece of construction. So it is all built. I think I am going to concentrate on the bounty quests, and then tackle the Endless Paths of Od Nua for once and all.

Maybe there is a certain order that you have to follow for your character to develop up to the enemies they will be facing? Like clockwise or something?

Not really, its pretty random. I think Obisidian just did not really playtest and balance the difficulty in certain parts is all. The Laugerfeths would not be particularly bad if they did not paralyze with every hit, including grazes. If they only paralyzed on a critical hit for example they would be in line with all the other monsters. As it is you cannot go against them until you are 9th level and have Prayer Against Imprisonment. So basically don't consider the White March until you are at least that level.

Obsidian did a leveling system in New Vegas where enemies were extremely overpowered at early levels; a decent fight at medium levels; and way underpowered as compared to the player at high levels. Maybe that is the same standard they used for this game. (go back there at level 20 and own those paralyzing beasts, lol).

It is weird, because like in New Vegas, it is a fairly linear world. It is basically divided into three areas. You start out in one, and then each successive area is unlocked by moving along to specific points in the main quest. So it should not be too hard to match the level of the monsters to what level the players are going to be when they encounter them.

But Obisidian still gets the difficulty out of whack, with areas that have monsters that are a walkover for a your level mixed with others that are impossible for your level. Or areas you reach early like the Endless Paths of Od Nua or Cragholdt Bluffs, which are impossible for low level characters. With all the people playing the beta you would think they would have recognized how unbalanced the creatures can be. But it just went right over their heads.

Instead you learn that there are some areas you just cannot go to until late in the game. White March is one of those, don't try it until Level 9 and you have Prayer Against Infirmity. Don't try Cragholdt Bluffs until right before the very end of the game and you are Level 13 or so. Don't try going past the first level of the Endless Paths of Od Nua until you are level 10 or higher.

Speaking of which, I have done a bunch of bounty quests. That makes a little over half of them done. Now I have returned to The Endless Paths of Od Nua. I am down to Level 12. So I am hoping to finish it all off before moving on to the Third Act area.

That is so strange! But I remember reading about the original Fallout games being nearly impossible to live through at any stage due to the toughness of the enemies (same developers as this game), and since those early Fallouts developed a cult following maybe they are striving to reproduce that success with this game by using that same method.

It does seem to be their signature; "if you somehow survive the first 10 levels, we'll reward you by making you strong enough to beat 7 more, then give you three you can breeze through..."

I finished the Endless Paths of Od Nua. It went pretty easily for the most part. There were a couple of fights where paralyzing enemies gave me some trouble, but I was able to work though it with Prayer Against Infrimity and Suppress Affliction.

There was an Adra Dragon at the end of it. But Team Deadwalker was able to slay it without too much trouble. The Deadwalkers turned 14th level just before facing it, and I am sure that helped. Serana was able to turn the paralyzing tables, and paralyzed it for most of the fight. It only got one really good hit in (which took the entire team down by more than half their health). But Sofie's healing kept the Deadwalkers in the fight, while the others put a lot of killin' on the dragon and its minions.

And I think I forgot this pic of the White Forge from The White March.

Great pictures, SubRosa. I'm still greatly enjoying following Team Deadwalker through the Pillars of Eternity.

Ooh, cool forge!

Tonight I beat the game like a red-headed stepchild. A sky dragon was crushed under Persephone's undead heel, and the same fate would befall Woedica's Guardians.

Before embarking on the final set of levels, the game told me I was higher level than intended for the content, and asked if I wanted to increase the difficulty. The same as the White March did. I kind of just wanted to get it over with, so I left the difficulty as it was. By this time Team Deadwalker was Level 14, the maxiumum for the game with the White March expansion. I think it is 12 without White March.

At the end you get to decide what to do with the big bad you defeat, and then with all the souls of the people he has been stealing (I don't want to give away too many spoilers). After you make your choices, you get a slideshow of how your actions affected the world. This not just about the main quest, but all the other things you did, such as how Gilded Vale fares depending on what you did to Raedric, what faction takes over Defiance Bay, how Caed Nua fares, the Endless Paths of Od Nua, The White March, etc... Pretty standard stuff for an Obsidian game these days.

Congrats for beating the game with your toons!

Holy Cow, those enemies are HUGE!!!

Congratulations!

I assume that the big bad boss is the masked guy from the ruin in the tutorial. Woedica's guardians remind me of fire giants from Baldur's Gate

Thaos - the guy with the big helmet at the end of the tutorial - is indeed the big bad. When you get to the endgame you learn a lot more about him and his motives, as well as why you see all those people being tortured in flashbacks, and even what your own involvement was in all of it in a previous life. The story overall was well done.

All in all Pillars was a very fun game. Players of the Baldur's Gate games will easily recognize it's style and gameplay, and I would say it holds up to them extremely well. Better in many regards. I am in the mood for other things right now, but I know I will get back to playing Pillars some more in the future.

I have a mind to try playing a Wizard, and using only the vanilla companions throughout the entire game. After having some time to play with Serana as a Wizard adventurer-companion, and even doing another quick test creating a Wizard PC for the first level of the game, I think it would work fine. Something I would never say of the old BG games.

Magic works a lot better than I initially realized. I believe all Wizards start with an implement (a wand, rod, or scepter). These are not melee weapons as I had initially thought, but ranged weapons. They are like the staffs in Oblivion or Skyrim. A Wizard's spell casting is still limited by per rest, but they can use their implement indefinitely for a ranged magical attack. The damage is comparable to the starting one-handed swords, daggers, axes, etc...

If you take the Blast Talent (which I believe you should), attacks with your implement get turned into a small area-effect blast with a 5 point DR bypass (armor-piercing). Add the Penetrating Blast Talent, and that turns into a 10 point DR bypass. So you have a continual source of magical attacks with your implement that are nothing to sneeze at.

Plus of course you always have your Arcane Assault ability, which gives you two ranged magical attacks every encounter.

Finally, IE Mod allows you to change how many spells you can cast per level, how many your grimoire can hold per level, and whether your spells are castable per rest or per encounter (also selectable by level). I highly recommend IE Mod, not just for spellcasting.

Thanks again, SubRosa. The rich details, insights and advice you have shared in this thread really do make it a wonderful resource for anyone undertaking this game. It also serves as a neat sharing place for those who are playing it.

I discovered something today. The Weapon and Shield style stacks with the One Handed Style. So take both for your Sword and Board characters. However, the caveat is that they don't stack if you are using a shield with the Bash effect. Turns out the Bash makes the shield count as a second weapon.

I have some news for the other Pillars of the community. The White March Part 2 was released on Gog just a few days ago. Since I bought both back when the first DLC was released, I am downloading it now.

Turns out my game is so out of date that White March 2 won't install. It is too out of date for the patches Gog has up as well. So now I am redownloading the entire thing.

IE Mod has been updated to work with Pillars version 3 (with White March parts 1 & 2). Installing the new IE Mod was a real nightmare, but I eventually got it working. Now when you start the game, you have to use the new IE Mod launcher, instead of the regular game icon.

I decided to start a new game, and created Aela as a Priest, since she is primarily a Restoration/Healer type character. Instead of using the vanilla companions, I decided to go the route of hiring Adventurers and turning them into her old adventuring pals from Seven. I spent last night and this afternoon creating portraits, and trying to figure out who to use. Right now I am looking at adding Ungarion (who I might try making a Cipher instead of a Wizard), Valens, Seridwe, and either Talun-Lei or Nashira.

I am not sure on which of the last two to go with. Nashira would obviously be an Ocean-Folk. I am not sure what race to make Talun-Lei. Maybe a Nature Godlike? Whichever one I pick, they will probably be Barbarians though.

While I know I want Seridwe on the team, I am not sure to class to make her either. She is an archer, which initially makes me think Ranger. But she never had an animal companion in the Aela fic, and was more of a fighter who used a bow. So I could go with a Fighter or a Rogue instead. But most of their abilities are geared toward melee fighting.

Here are some nuts and bolts on game versions and IEMod

The latest version of IEMod is 5.1.0. There are a couple of optional beta updates to it, that replace just the IEMod .dll file. I am using the more recent, which is 5.2.1. It works fine for me with no issues. But your mileage may vary. This version of IEMod works with Pillars version 3.00 (Gog-13) or 3.01 (Gog-14).

I did some checking, and there were two game patches released since I installed version 3.0 of the base game and the two White March dlcs. I downloaded version 3.02 (a.k.a. Gog-15) and gave it a whirl with the newest version of IEMod. It does not work with game version 3.02. So beware. I made a copy of my old game folder before installing 3.02, so I will just be reverting to that.

Some other bad news. While IEMod in general works with the earlier versions, its Per Encounter Spell settings don't. The settings are there in the Options -> IEMod sections, but they don't do anything. It is because the developers completely changed how Per Encounter spells work with game version 3. There are some other things IEMod does which I like, so I am still going to use it with my older game version.

Speaking of which, now in the vanilla game instead of gaining access to all of your 1st level spells at Level 9 as Per Encounter rather than Per Rest, they changed it to you can only use one spell per level on a Per Encounter basis. They call it Spell Mastery. So that is a big nerf on spellcasters.

Some other big changes are that the skills are more useful. Now the Survival skill grants you a special stat bonus every time you rest in the wilderness. Each rank in the skill unlocks a new type of bonus. You pick which one want to use for each character whenever you camp. So that is really cool.

All characters now get a new ability called Second Wind, which is tied to the Athletics skill. It is a once per Encounter self-heal. The amount it heals up is based on your Athletics. So the higher your skill, the more healing you get. That gives your tanks a good reason for maxing out Athletics.

After going back to my old 3.00 game, I downloaded the patches to 3.01 from Gog. There are three of them, one for the base game, and one for each part of the White March. Install them in this order:

First install the base game patch.

Then install the White March Part 1 patch.

Then install White March part 2 patch.

It worked fine after that, and I can confirm that IEMod does work with version 3.01 (a.k.a. Gog-14).

Nits and picks about patches and mods aside, I have been having a blast in my new playthrough of Pillars of Eternity. As I said before, I created Aela as my main character, and made her a Priest. I am having a lot of fun playing her. I miss being able to summon things, but otherwise she plays close to how I would imagine her. I actually stopped playing her in Skyrim because she couldn't do the things in the game the way I picture she can. The same with Oblivion. So this is nice. The whole Watcher business of PoE and its ability to see and communicate with souls also dovetails nicely into who she is, so that even works.

Since this is a team game, I was originally thinking of bringing in Ungarion, Teresa of the Faint Smile, Tadrose, Methredhel, etc... to be her sidekicks. But that is more the Fighters Guild team. Instead I went back to her days in story Seven, and formed her original adventuring band. Plus this way I can also do another gameplay in the future using Teresa, Tadrose, Methie, and some of the other Fighters Guild folks.

Aela's Five

From left to right is Aela, Ungarion (who is trying on a new horned helmet, he just has to make sure everyone notices him), Seridwe, Valens, and Do'Sakhar. The wolf in front of Seridwe is her animal companion Trinimac. While the glowing transparent pig is one of the Preorder Bonuses, a giant miniature space piglet pet. I got that without pre-ordering. Thank you Gog.com!

Ungarion is a Wizard. I was originally going to try him as a Cipher, and I actually did start a test game with him as the main character just to test out the Cipher abilities. I did like the class. but it didn't feel right for him. So I fell back on the Wizard, which is of course what Ungie is. Seridwe is a Ranger, since she is primarily an archer, and that class is focused on archery. The animal companion is new, but hardly a deal-breaker. I briefly considered making Valens a Paladin. But he's not the Nerevarine yet. At this point in his life he is a warrior and a general, so I went with Fighter. Do'Sakhar was the most difficult, and actually won out over Talun-Lei and Nashira. I was able to find a pic of a Khajiit with black and white stripes from a mod to use for him, and that helped clinch him. There are no Khajiit in PoE, so I made him a Moon-Godlike. He is also Barbarian, which makes my first time playing one.

Here is the same pic without the user interface

And finally zoomed in as far as I can go and still get them all in the pic

Aela has been rolling her way through Act I. She is over half way done, and I have only been playing a few days. The Five are definitely my most powerful team yet. They are awesome monster bashers. (I know I am jinxing myself by saying that). So far they have plowed through everything without much trouble. Only once has a team member been knocked down so far. Most of the time the baddies are dead by the time Do'Sakhar turns on his Barbarian berserk power. So he hardly ever really gets to make good use of it.

Well they look thoroughly awesome!...

I know I should really look up what this game is about, as I don't know anything about it... ...

That story, btw, (Y'know, that little Seven thing you did) was just proper awesome...Absolutely loved that...

I know Trinimac is something old and mythical etc...But wasn't it - most importantly - the three-headed dragon in Dungeons & Dragons?... ...

Awesome pics!...

Hope you enjoy the game...*Applauds heartily*...

Well everything I do is proper awesome! I would never do anything improperly awesome.

I think you are thinking of Tiamat as the 3 headed dragon? Trinimac is the ancient elven warrior god. He is the one who got turned into Malacath. But some Orcs still believe in Trinimac, and worship him in his old form. They think that if enough people also believe the same, it will turn him back to how he originally was. Who knows, they might even be right.

Pillars of Eternity is a lot of fun. If you like the old isometric team dungeoning games like Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights you will enjoy it.

I just wish they would stop patching it constantly and be done with it. I suppose I should be happy that Obsidian is still putting so much effort into it. But it gets exasperating when I try to keep up with the constant updates, which always break IEMod in the process. It is like Skyrim was with SKSE. Every time Beth patched Skyrim it broke SKSE, which in turn broke every mod like SkyUI that was dependent on it.

Ah!...Yes...Yes I am that... ...Thank you!...

Also, thanks for the info...I had completely forgotten that...

I shall have to youtube some gameplay...I've no idea what those gaming things are...Aside from very old versions of Hero Quest on the Amiga or something like, Final Fantasy 9 aside, my first "modern" dungeon fantasy game was Oblivion... ...

I have a short vid of a battle a page or two back. It gives an example of what the combat in the game is like.

In short, complicated!... ...

Absolutely fair dues to you...I know it's all to do with practice and all that...And it's similar to the turn-based thing of the Final Fantasy thing, but...

Though it did make me want to dig out Dungeon Siege III, which looks kinda similar, being Obsidian as well...*Watches video*...Or not...I thought the caves and the characters looked a bit...

Nevermind... ...

Fair dues...Reading through your snippets, it really does sound like it's an excellent game and also, that you really enjoy it a lot...*Applauds heartily*...

I'm always drawn to the BG / Icewind Dale type of D&D games so I really enjoy following your progress. A nice bonus is that it all remains safely here in case any of us go get PoE and want to give it a try. Thank you. As McB says, proper awesome indeed.

Gog.com has Pillars on sale right now for $18. So if I was a Marine Aviator or Medieval Knight or Buff Elven Archer I would buy it, and relive my old glory days of adventuring along the Sword Coast...

Aela's Five finished the first Act yesterday, killing Raedric and clearing out the surface of Caed Nua. Last night and this morning they have been plumbing the Endless Depths of Caed Nua. I have gotten down to level 6. They are not blitzing through everything anymore! The Trolls and Black Oozes have been really difficult. Likewise with the first Drakes I am now seeing.

Countess Bathory's tub?

Slaying a Drake

Aela (she is in the robes on the left, with the glow around her hands), pierces an undead with the Barbs of Condemnation

Aela and Ungarion are really surprising me in this game. Most of the time they are support characters plinking away with their wands and scepters. But when they pull out their cans of whoop-ass, they really clean up. Just a little while ago they teamed up against an undead Ranger that was shooting the team from afar. In one turn Aela Barbed it, and Ungarion hit it with Minoletta's Minor Missiles, and that killed it straight out.

Very cool stuff and it sounds like you're making great progress with the Aela and Ungarian +3 team. I remember D&D dragons as OMG hard but it was nice that fighting them was often sort of optional.

Aela and company cleared out the Endless Paths of Od Nua down to Level 8. It was getting really difficult down there by that point. So I decided to give it a break and come back when they are higher level. So instead they went to Definace Bay, and now they have done almost all the quests there. They only have one more quest for the Crucible Knights to do, and the final quest for Lady Webb. Then I can do the Animancy Trial and finish Act II. I still have a few of the outdoor areas around Defiance Bay to explore as well. Probably after the trial.



An ancient Engwithan soul anchor machine

Alpha strike with arquebuses

Sounds like good advice!

Ungarion slices and dices with a Ghost Blades spell

Very nostalgic to see your screens - they look great! Guns in D&D?!? Oh I love those mage summon independent blades spells from D&D!

There are guns, but it isn't D&D. The game is basically set in an early Renaissance Era world, with magic tossed in for good measure. So there are matchlock firearms and heavy plate armor that was developed specifically to stop the bullets from them. The guns have such long reload times that they are only good for the first shot in an encounter. Then you have to switch to your main weapon for the rest of the battle. It does make for a very effective Alpha Strike to lead off every fight if you arm most of your characters with arabesques and all shoot the same enemy from stealth. It kills most things instantly.

The blades in that spell don't fly around attacking things like the dancing sword spells in D&D. They just fire out once in a 180 degree arc from the caster, slicing up everything in their path. Best of all there is no friendly fire damage. So it is a handy 1st level spell you can use when the enemy crowds in close around your front line fighters.

I discovered something new yesterday. Version 3.xx expanded on the stronghold quest. Now they included a major battle you have to fight with the former, legal owner of the keep (who abandoned it and left it to rot, until you lifted the curse on it and killed all the monsters within). The allies you make in other parts of the game can be called upon to aid you in the battle, which is neat. So too the hirelings you recruit for the stronghold.

I didn't really like the battle much though. It was too big and confusing, and it was really pushing the limits of the game to do. That kind of thing is better left to the Total War games like Rome or Shogun.

Which brings me to something else I have come across this time around. CTDs. I have been getting them ever since I started playing version 3. I already went back from 3.02 to 3.01 because IEMod won't work on 3.02. I was getting a ton of CTDs in the Endless Paths of Od Nua and so rolled back farther to 3.00. But I still get them from time to time, usually during battles when I press the pause button. I am not even sure if it is the game causing it, or IEMod.

CTD's? Oh my. . . I thought Bethesda had the copyrights on CTD's.

Seriously, sorry though. I hope you can resolve the problem.