Various Thoughts

The game’s optional concluding chapter turned out to be both better and worse than I’d feared.

The first part is balanced pretty well and has you re-visiting/re-facing some of your earlier foes, with only the Pitax portion being ridiculous (save it for last). The second part unfortunately is infested with Wild Hunt enemies… even occasionally sending them at you in waves. It’s pretty straight-forward though and the scenery is interesting so it ends up a superior overall experience when compared to the earlier exploration of the House at the Edge of Time.

Then there’s the final battle, which really piles on some nastiness. Like a lot of RPGs the boss here has several forms (each with its own set of minions) that you have to work your way through with no chance to rest in-between. The second form being the most dangerous by far as a good chunk of your party will likely end up Dominated unless you happen to have some sort of defense against it. After the third form falls the true form appears and engages you in a battle of wits. That part’s pretty cool and offers a variety of checks to make the final-final battle easier. At least I think that’s what succeeding on those checks does. I passed them and my party got revived and fully-healed, which may happen even if you fail but I have no intention of fighting through the boss’s first 3 forms again anytime soon.

Expect your party to reach level 17/18 by the end of the game if you have both of the XP Sharing options enabled. In the last chapter the PC of this playthrough looked like this: Naked with +1 Weapon (the green attributes are due to Bokken’s masterwork potion, which gives a permanent +2 to all of them) and Fully Equipped.

Up to the Rushlight Tournament invitation now in Chapter 5 with a playtime of >70 hours (not sure how much of that is loading times though), at 14th level with Kingdom ranks of 7, 6, 6, 10, 9, 5, 6, 8, 6, 4.

Chapter 3 turned out to be nowhere near as bullshit as Chapter 2, with most of the enemies being much weaker than the enhanced owlbears. There are still a few unfair encounters scattered about (such a zombie mage with infinite Enervation casts and a class of characters with permanent unavoidable stat-draining auras), but for the most part the chapter’s a breeze, with Chapter 4 being even easier once you get over the initial shock of having no time for kingdom development (development occurs at the end of the chapter instead).

Some things:
– Try to focus on Economy first to increase your income; note that after 40 rank-ups a project will appear to cut upgrade times in half.
— The really game-changing projects start appearing at Kingdom ranks 6+.
– Do not pick the ‘neutral’ adviser in the beginning, else you’ll eventually get hit by a nasty debuff.
– When a dwarf pops up demanding recompense for his ancestors’ expenses, give him the money. His request is worded badly and he’s one of the 10 artisans.
— That said, the artisan quests currently seem to be broken (they still give you expensive gifts though).
– Save an Emerald, an Emerald Necklace, the 3 “On Transmutation” books, and the Roc Egg; they’re needed for sidequests.
– Make sure to explore the Dire Narlmarches sometime after Armag’s Tomb; the main quest won’t send you there.
– Armor class is kind of meaningless with all the attack bonus bloat (reminds me of the first NWN). You’re better off with damage reduction and miss chance.
– The Shambling Mound in the Elk-Portal Abandoned Keep area can only be killed by negative energy for some reason.
– The Bridge-area Linnorm and Owlbear Treant in the Everblooming Flower area on the other hand have to be killed with cold iron.
– Make sure to bring the Second Execution battleaxe with you when you set off on the Varnhold Vanishing quest.
– You can find/get some pretty cool daggers and kukri, a nice Necrotic fauchard, a sai that causes bleeding, a club that casts Vampiric Touch on crit, a Dex-damaging sickle, and a mage-enhancing scythe.
— The other weapons so far aren’t as exciting and/or have annoying drawbacks.

Been playing this game for something like 30 hours, and being month or so out from the big Varnhold quest I decided now is a good time to post about it.

It’s very much like Neverwinter Nights 2 crossed with Pillars/Tyranny… only with all the ease-of-use aspects (such as free resting in the former and encounter-based abilities in the latter) that made them tolerable compared to actual P&P games removed:

– One potion or scroll per belt slot; no stacking.
– Both individual character encumbrance and party encumbrance.
– Some (otherwise indispensable defensive) spells require consumable items to cast.
– Resting for 8 hours heals a whole 2 HP and 1 Attribute point (if drained).
– Nearly all non-fighter abilities are rest-limited.
– Time matters; everything is timed to some extent (though thankfully time freezes when you’re not resting/traveling).
– Enemy stats are not even remotely comparable to PC stats; constant (rest-limited) buffing is essential.

To give you an example of the insane monster stats, consider a ‘basic’ encounter that can be found when the Monster Invasion starts and special Owlbears with stats equal to dragons start literally appearing out of thin air: A group of 4 normal Owlbears each with a +14 Base Attack combined with 30 strength. Four creatures each effectively equivalent to a level 14 fighter against a party of level 8-9 characters as a standard (unavoidable since a quest target is located just beyond them) non-boss encounter. That’s a large power difference, to the point that I strongly suggest selecting one of the ‘reduced enemy stats’ difficulty options if you’re adverse to frequent reloading.

Some other things that will make your life easier are to make certain you have both a pure arcane caster (for Blur/Displacement, Haste, Slow) and either a pure divine caster or multiple lesser divine casters (for healing along with mass energy resistance and mass poison neutralization). Without both of those you’re going to be in a world of pain and/or annoyance. You’ll also need someone with maxed-out Perception unless you want to miss about 30% of the content (both loot and side locations).

If you can get past all those (severe) issues, and following a guide will definitely make the undertaking less daunting (do note though that guide’s a bit out of date and some items have been moved and encounters buffed), the game has a massive amount of value to offer in both its roleplaying options and shear scope: It takes place over a decade and average gameplay times seem to be in the 100+ hour range.

But wait, what about the kingdom building aspects? Well… they exist and can be set to auto in the difficulty settings if you don’t want to be bothered, but they’re both kind of busy-work and kind of not. While the vast majority of kingdom related things won’t hurt/help you while adventuring there are a few useful things like the artisans and a project that grants global poison immunity while within your borders. Ultimately it’s more of a money-sink though, to give you somewhere to spend the tens of thousands of gold you’ll end up with (the merchant in town sells BP). Just be prepared to constantly have 10-20+ Projects sitting around that you can’t afford to start and try to make sure you’re within your borders just before the beginning of each month to catch any late-spawning Problem events.

Oh, one other thing to keep in mind is that the developers are actively patching it at the moment and there are some bugs/oversights still present. Mostly notably to me were the missing Forest Bracers and Cypress Queen item set pieces, which you’ll have to manually add through save editing if you want to complete those sets.