Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous General Discussion, Playthroughs and Minimal/No Reload Thread

mlnevese

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I just finished Chapter 4 (The Varnhold Vanishing) in Kingmaker, and I have more than half a million gold pieces.

Gotta make sure I have enough for the cool items that get sold at the Rushlight Tournament!

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It's a very rare RPG where you don't get rich way before the end. in Wrath of the Righteous my trickster had over 2 million when we came back to the material world. The trickster ability to enhance any magical item we find really adds up quickly
 

Antimatter

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Just finished the map called Wintersun. It had quite a lot of content packed into only 1 area. But with certain enemies giving as much as 9.7k EXP, the party quickly reached the 13th (!) level.

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A few of those Spectres were really dangerous. One of them one-shotted Nenio with the Finger of Death spell for 170 damage. Fortunately, the Spectre died seconds later. There was also another Spectre that casted Sirocco and it got Daeran killed. But now that we have Sosiel in the camp with the Scribe Scrolls ability, we can create scrolls of Raise Dead during camp rests really cheap.

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We raised the fallen comrades, rested, and handled the final fight in that area. Wenduag now rides her own dinosaur! Fully buffed, we didn't have many problems - look at the HP levels in the party, we were barely scratched.

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Biggest damage so far (153+17 in one hit):

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The focus on "biggest damage number" speaks volumes about how to win battles in this game... it's not mage chess, it's brawling, at least it looks like it.
With a cool glowing scythe, but still ;)
Yep, 'biggest damage numbers' in particular and overall focus on all those 'bloated numbers' everywhere is what brings me some discomfort with Pathfinder system.
 

Urdnot_Wrex

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Yep, 'biggest damage numbers' in particular and overall focus on all those 'bloated numbers' everywhere is what brings me some discomfort with Pathfinder system.
This is what I meant, yes. I'm still interested, and right now I'm trying out different game genres anyway, but to scratch the itch of tactical combat challenge (that for example BG with SCS gave, or that I had with Divinity: Original Sin 2 on Tactician, where you need to outsmart the AI instead of pre-buffing and clubbing it to death before it does the same to you), I think Pathfinder games might not be the right option for me.

But from what I've heard, story and NPCs are decent in both games, progress has been made from Kingmaker to WotR, and the whole Crusade mode thing seems to add a nice strategy element to compensate for "beat them to death with your biggest stick", so I'm still looking forward to what the Owlcat team is doing next.
Maybe with Rogue Trader they'll find their own balance between RPG and strategy, shifting more towards the strategic elements they integrated into both Pathfinder games already, and allowing for better, more tactical combat design and AI by the commitment to turn-based only. I remain curious.

A question for those of you with tabletop experience, and I hope my forgetful nature isn't just repeating what was maybe said a while ago already:
Is this focus on just maxing out biggest damage and other numbers a thing in Pathfinder rules (or DnD 3.5 rules it leans on) in general, or is this just the computer game adaptation implementing the rules that way and the combination with combat design and enemy AI there?
 
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I like the story and NPCs in both games and truth be told I have a strong feeling of deja vu comparing Pathfinder and Baldur's Gate series. Since low level compains are far more appealing for me (this is one of the reasons of my multiple re-starts after reaching level 10 or near) and while both sequels made strong and flashy improvements in many ways personally I like BG-ToSC and Kingmaker a little bit more than their successors.
 

m7600

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Is this focus on just maxing out biggest damage and other numbers a thing in Pathfinder rules (or DnD 3.5 rules it leans on) in general, or is this just the computer game adaptation implementing the rules that way and the combination with combat design and enemy AI there?
IMO, it doesn't seem to be a feature of 3rd (or 3.5) DnD. I mean, Icewind Dale 2 and The Temple of Elemental Evil both use 3rd edition rules, with a little bit of 3.5 sprinkled here and there, and it doesn't seem (to my mind, at least) that those games place a heavy emphasis on the biggest possible damage. They do emphasize a few other quirks though, like spamming Fireball in TTOEE, but that's a different discussion, I think.
 

m7600

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I tried to reach rank X in all of the kingdom stats in my latest run, but I couldn't do it, I just ran out of time.

So let's do some numbers, just to get a clearer picture. Increasing a rank takes 14 days. Once you've done this 40 times, there's a project to reduce it to 7 days.

This means that ranking up 40 times takes 560 days. And if you distribute this evenly, it means that you will reach rank IV in every kingdom stat (including Espionage). To reach rank IV in a single kingdom stat, you need to spend 56 days on it.

All of this is assuming that you're increasing rank after rank, non-stop, without skipping a single day.

After unlocking the reduction in time to just 7 days per rank (and I'm not even counting how many days you need to spend on that event itself), you would still need 42 days per rank to reach X in any of them. And, in order to reach X in all of them, we're looking at a total of 420 days, after unlocking the time reduction benefit.

All in all, this means that you need a grand total of 980 days to reach rank X in all kingdom stats.

What I don't know with certainty is how many days in total you have at your disposal from the moment your Barony starts to the moment when you travel to the House at the Edge of Time. Obviously, if reaching X in every rank is possible, then you must have more than 980 days. But I don't know how many more extra days you would have, exactly.

Edit: five of the ten stats (Community, Loyalty, Military, Economy and Divine) already start at rank I. So that saves up 70 days. But you still need 910 days to rank up everything to the max, and that's a lot.
 
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m7600

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Well, I looked up how long each part of the Ancient Curse lasts. This can give us an idea of how many days we have at our disposal. The curse has seven parts, and these are the corresponding durations:

Part One: 42 days.
Part Two: 192 days.
Part Three: 279 days.
Part Four: 232 days.
Part Five: 287 days.
Part Six: 213 days.
Part Seven: 265 days.

Total: 1.510 days. If we subtract the 910 days needed for ranking up all of the kingdom stats, this leaves us with 600 days to play the rest of the game. This includes everything else: traveling, resting, fighting monsters, exploring dungeons, doing quests, doing other kingdom stuff like claiming regions, upgrading those regions, etc.

So, theoretically, it should be possible to rank up every kingdom stat to X.
 

m7600

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I've finally done it. I reached level 20 with Charname and also X in all kingdom stats. Here's how it went:

I started a new run as a Sylvan Sorcerer with a pet Leopard. Shared experience is turned off, only party members get experience. And only skill users get experience from skill checks, not the entire party. Speaking of the party, it was a three person team for the most part: Charname, Valerie and Amiri. I only accepted other NPCs temporarily, to complete their personal quests. When the Pitax chapter started, Charname was level 18 or 19. After succeeding at several skill checks in the tavern at Pitax, she reached level 20. Valerie and Amiri were level 17 I think. I also bought the Ring of Circumstances at the Rushlight Tournament, and a few other items.

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As for the kingdom stats, I reached X in all ranks after the Pitax chapter, during An Ancient Curse Part Seven. Mind you, I didn't explore the entire map, nor did I claim every region, and I only upgraded one region so far. I have 199 days remaining until the Ancient Curse is upon the kingdom. I don't know if that will be enough for exploring, claiming the rest of the regions and upgrading them. But I did research all of the curses, completed all of the economy projects, and trained all of the advisors that can be trained.

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Another thing that I want to mention is that since Charname is level 20, I can hire some level 20 mercs instead of trying to level up Valerie and Amiri. They're expensive though, apparently a level 20 merc costs 200.000 gold. But if you have the cash (which I don't, I spent it all on shiny items and kingdom stuff) you can have a full party of level 20 NPCs before going to the House at the Edge of Time.


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As for the artisan's masterpieces, I only got some of them. I think they were: Onslaught, Grandmaster's Rod, Ambrosial Attire, and Mastery. I didn't get Bokken's potion, but maybe he'll craft it before An Ancient Curse Part Seven ends.

Honestly, this game has a lot of replay value. I've been meaning to start Wrath of the Righteous but I'm still playing Kingmaker for some reason, lol.
 
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m7600

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A few things allowed me to save time and reach X in all of the kingdom ranks:

1) Never go hunting. Always have camping rations and use them, even outdoors. Hunting takes several hours, so if you never hunt, you can save a considerable amount of time.
2) Never skip days in the kingdom management screen. Or at least try to keep the skipping to an absolute minimum.
3) Try to get Mage Towers and Teleportation Circles as early as possible.
4) Do the main quests for each chapter as early as possible and as fast as possible. Once those are done, spend your time ranking up your advisors. Don't do both at the same time, questing and kingdom stuff should be done separately.
 
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