Tales of the Watcher: A Pillars of Eternity I + II No Reload Thread

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Final Update: Storming the Palace and Ukaizo

We craft the blackwood hull, so now our ship is fully upgraded, and, in theory, we could sail it into the storm towards Ukaizo. I decide to side with the RDC instead. According to steam achievements, this is the rarest choice, which make sense, as it’s a straight up colonial takeover, but all factions here are morally dubious at best – so dubious that I have chosen Aeldys in my past two runs, as a “Let Chaos Reign” option – at least she’s honest about her intentions and personally likeable, despite being a murderous pirate. The main reason I'm picking the RDC this time around is to keep Maia with the party. Time for "The Final Maneuver."

We fight our way to the palace - until we get inside, it's relatively lightly guarded. Not knowing much about the encounter I decide to first take on the prince downstairs. Some guards attack us from the rear, but Serafen’s roar is ready to to keep them away and protect our more vulnerable party members:

Spoiler

As we take down the prince, the quest is suddenly marked as complete already, and the queen, whom I expected to wait upstairs, is gone, so it seems like you can only take out one of the two. I do feel a bit bad about doing this, but the Hazanui grants us the Blade of Takowa, the submarine the RDC has been working on, which allows us to simply dive beneath the storm.

We sail towards Ondra’s Mortar, but I decide to have some fun, and the Blade of Takowa joins the battle between the RDC and VTC for a bit:

Spoiler

As the Guardian of Ukaizo attacks the victorious fleet, we get help from our water dragon friend from way earlier. Seems like we won't really get a final boss battle:

Spoiler

We arrive in Ukaizo, and immediately, two engwithan sentinels attack us. These foes seem fearsome due their size, but Maia instantly takes one of them down with “Double Tap”, the next one soon to follow.

Spoiler

Indeed, the Guardian doesn't show up. Helping the dragon earlier really did a lot of work - we skipped a potentially deadly fight and now we're skipping another one.

We deactivate the storms and talk to the gods for one final time. It seems like this loses us our resting buffs, so we eat what we have left. Shark Soup for Triozum and Xoti, Mohora Wraps for the others.

For the final battle, we have some of our statue summons at the ready (that we basically haven't used during the entire run), Maia drinks a spatial awareness potion, Xoti buffs with her usual two staples and Aloth increases his defenses. Maia takes down her rival Pallegina (who has apparently not equipped all the awesome gear we have given her, making her much weaker) first:

Spoiler

An empowered missile salvo by Aloth takes down most of the VTC troops:

Spoiler

And Serafen's driving roars destroy the spellwrights, effectively ending the battle.

Spoiler

Well, the faction battle has never been considered much of a finale in terms of difficulty, and since we didn’t get to fight the guardian, that’s all there is left – we talk to Eothas and finish the game.

The endgame has confirmed my earlier suspicion that, at least for a completionist run, level scaling (despite my dislike for the system) seems to be needed to make the later parts of the game a notable challenge, even on PotD. Aside from the quite difficult first act, which we did without an injury only because of all the testing I had done for it, we suffered only three knockouts in total: Two on Aloth, due to the naga archer ambush in Hasongo and due to friendly fire from Tekehu during a ship battle, and one on Serafen while fighting the ancient fampyrs at the Fampyr Cave to the north-west. Looking at our statistics, Maia dealt the most damage by far - no surprise there -, followed by Serafen and Aloth (both relatively even), Xoti after that and Triozum last. Our crusader watcher was basically unkillable during the second half of the game, but he also did little else but tank everything and sometimes cast lay on hands or liberating exhortation. A more dynamic tank, less focused on pure survival and stronger in utility or even damage, might make for better gameplay (though I don't always want to go with the very obvious herald pick, which I've already used during my last run).
Also, it seems like the observation that many people have made for PoE1 is true for Deadfire as well: It's relatively easy to jump from a lower difficulty right into PotD once you actually take the time to understand the game mechanics and have some basic idea about the difficulty levels of various encounters.

I have added the Secret Archives of the Hand Occult to the opening post, where different runs with different varieties of sucess may be referenced. Triozum's name will be written in the Tome of the Watchers as a "Notable Watcher of the Deadfire Archipelago."

 

[Antimatter]

Congrats on beating the game and thanks a lot for sharing the story. I haven't played PoE 2 and haven't looked at your spoilers but read most of your texts. You make it sound as if PoE 2 is a smooth and rather short game (compared to, say, BG2). Is it so?

 

[Alesia_BH]

I'm still not reading your posts, Enuhal, since I'm avoiding spoilers, but I take it from Antimatter's comment that your run was a success. Congrats!

I, too, would be interested in hearing your thoughts on PoE 2. A review from a no reloader's perspective would be appreciated.

 

[Enuhal]

Thanks to you both - here are some toughts regarding your questions:

Is Deadfire a short game? Luckily, I can see the actual numbers in the save files, so I can tell you exactly how long my runs have taken me in the past and now:
My first run took me about 54 hours, though I didn't kill all megabosses in that one (I resumed the run once the DLCs came out and I think I killed maybe two megabosses). My second one, which was truly a completionist run, was about 43 hours (obviously faster because I knew the game by now and was spending less time wandering around aimlessly or reading everything). This no-reload run took me about 36 hours, though considering that this one involved zero DLCs and no megabosses, this seems similiar to my second run (obviously playing on PotD also makes combat take longer).

The numbers for PoE2 completionist runs are in fact very similiar to my PoE1 completionist runs; However, the main story is quite short. There are kind of only 4 big main quests, though you generally also have to complete a faction questline (which involves around 4 more big quests, depending on the faction - there's an alternative to this, but in the current version of the game that alternative will take you much, much longer as you'd be forced to clear out the highest level optional content in the game). However, only doing that main content will put you very, very much behind in levels, but you could propably get away with that plus the mostly non-violent sidequests in Port Maje, Neketaka and Dunnage and be at a reasonable if challenging level, though I wouldn't feel comfortable trying that on PotD (this would propably allow for a <10 hour run - though to be fair, I had much faster no-reload runs in BG1).

So, it's propably shorter than BG2, but propably longer than BG1, and about as long as PoE1 (though with a shorter main questline).

Regarding how smooth this game is to no-reload: First, it should be considered, while a decent amount of mechanics have changed, there are still a lot of gameplay elements very similiar to PoE1, and I'm well-versed in that game, so I already had an advantage (plus, two previous playthroughs of Deadfire). I really struggled during my very first playthrough in PoE2 though, when I basically tried to just copy what I'd do in the first game. You really do need to carefully read about the new affliction/inspiration system, read your abilities and spells (even if you think you know what they do - a lot of them have changed quite a bit) and realize what new strengths and weaknesses various classes and enemies have now. Multiclasses and subclasses add a lot of complexity and are very much worth playing with. There's also the really tough Act 1 - as mentioned in my introduction, I did some PotD testing (and a no-reload testrun after that), and the testing came down to about ~10 reloads until I had developed a strategy that I felt was somewhat no-reload-safe for the big battle at the digsite. I already knew (from my times at the obsidian boards) that this would likely be the most challenging part of the run, and since it's very early on in the game, I did it that way instead of running my head against the wall and starting a documented run over and over again only to die very quickly.

In many ways, the difficulty curve is comparable to the first Pillars of Eternity, which is also famous for having some of its toughest battles in late Act I (the Temple of Eothas, the Phantoms at Caed'Nua, Maerwald). The midgame, for both games, is fairly smooth indeed if you have a grasp of the mechanics (which you are likely to have by then, otherwise you propably wouldn't have made it past the hurdles in Act I). I would say that, depending on game knowledge, PoEI has a few more midgame challenges to throw at the player, but it is possible that I only felt that way because I didn't play Deadfire with level scaling and started to outlevel a lot of encounters once I had done most quests in Neketaka.
In terms of lategame challenges, Deadfire is known for being fairly easy by this point unless you get into the DLCs and megabosses. The megabosses are ridiculously tough and need very specific strategies to kill them (eventually killing them after many attempts in my second playthrough did teach me a lot about the concentration and interrupt system, though, which turned out to be quite useful in this run) - I would 100% say that to no-reload these, either prior experience or very careful studying, reading and watching of successful videos is required. The DLCs, especially the Forgotten Sanctum (and its final boss), have some real high-level challenges to offer (unlike the fairly simple actual endgame) - the problem here, and the reason I didn't do them: You will get to the level cap without ever touching the DLCs if you enjoy the exploration aspect of the game (which is one of the main selling points in my opinion), so the incentive to do that difficult high-level content for very little reward (there are some great items, of course, but you absolutely do not need them for the endgame) is not very high.

Similiar to PoE1, my feeling is that, once you have understood the mechanics, encounters and developed some successful strategies, this game can be a more reliable no-reload experience compared to the likes of BG2 - for the same reasons as the first game (for example, save or else-spells aren't here to instantly end your run if you're missing/losing a protective buff - you can still get crowd controlled, but even petrification, which could be a run-ender in PoE1, has been made less dangerous, and there's no comparison in the durations with infinity engine games, plus the inspiration system provides more tools against crowd control effects - and now you don't need a priest to have access to those, some are available to various classes/subclasses).

However, if you are really not just looking to beat the game in no-reload mode (which was a fun experience for me, to be sure - what wasn't fun was the death by scripted event in my test run, though I think there are only around 2-3 opportunites to die that way, and other than this one, they seem to be fairly obvious ones if you read the text) and are looking for a challenge instead, there are Magrans' Fires - a series of optional game modes that you can activate prior to your playthrough, one for each of the main gods in Eora's pantheon. They can be mixed and matched as one would wish:

Magran's Fires

Magran's Fires are optional challenges you can select when starting a new game in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (by clicking the head at the bottom of the main menu). These generally make the game more difficult and are aimed at veteran players or those looking to replicate the...

pillarsofeternity.fandom.com

Propably not a good option for a first run, though, but interesting for longevity and finding new things to try out.

In short: If you enjoyed no-reloading PoE1, you will propably enjoy doing so for this game as well as long as you're willing to invest the time and effort to get familiar with the changes in game mechanics.

Outside of no-reloading, I think both of these games are great, and Deadfire is propably underrated. Some people apparently can't get into the setting, the game didn't sell too well for various reasons, but I think the worldbuilding is fantastic (worldbuilding + exploration are the biggest strengths of the game, and I think it's better than the first one in those regards) and the complicated themes (such as colonialism) are handled quite well. Some of the writing for the companions can be quite cheesy (especially when it comes to anything related to romance), and the main quest suffers from pacing problems (which it also did in PoE1). The mechanics are great, though, once you get into them, except for the ship combat which I was never able to get into, but you can just skip it and fight boarding battles instead (though I would recommend not doing so in the early game until you've recruited a big crew and a few backup companions/sidekicks).

I hope that was helpful, and I'd be happy to answer any further questions.

 

[Enuhal]

A question to the community: How would you handle potential rules for the mechanical identity of the Watcher in a full saga playthrough for PoE, considering the introduction of subclasses and multiclasses in PoE2?

I would assume for it to be a continued run, the Watcher should be the same race, culture and background (in the end, while quite a few of the bonuses have changed, the mechanical advantages are relatively minor). However, since subclasses, except for priests and paladins, don't exist in PoE1, saying that the Watcher has to be the same basic character class seems to be quite restricting - same for saying they need to stay single class (even the official companions can change their class in Deadfire - Edér was a fighter in the first game, and he can join you in the second either as a fighter, a fighter/rogue or a rogue). With harsh restrictions like these, there could never be a multiclassed or subclassed watcher for a full saga playthrough.

My personal feeling right now is that, ideally, as long as the original class is still in there somewhere, everything should be fine: The Watcher could've learned new skills since defeating Thaos. So, in my mind, a fighter could become a devoted (fighter subclass), or a fighter/rogue, or even a devoted/ascendant (fighter/cipher, both with a subclass), but they can't turn into a pure cipher or, let's say, a cipher/ranger (the game lets you create your character anew from scratch upon import, as you're really only importing the history of your past deeds - there are story reasons for why your watcher could have changed quite a bit). There needs to be "fighter" in there somewhere. I would propably do the same with the official returning companions (turning Edér into a pure thief, while possible, seems a bit much, but he'd be fine as a fighter/rogue).

Of course, you wouldn't be forced to pick the same abilities as in the first game (a few of them don't even exist anymore), considering there are in-game reasons for why you're starting back at level 1. That could turn out to be very restricting and quite problematic in terms of gameplay, due to all the changes. Keeping a similiar role identity would be nice though (and is very likely to happen anyway).

Any thoughts or disagreements?

 

[Serg_BlackStrider]

From my personal point of view it should be something like this: the same race, culture and attributes scores while it could be some variations in background since there are some changes in background>skills combo between PoE1 and Deadfire. Also as long as the original class is still in there somewhere, everything should be fine.

 

[Enuhal]

Six Crowns for a Singer: Thayn Goron's Triple Crown Full Saga Run - Introduction

It's time to combine my recent Deadfire experience with my earlier knowledge of PoE1 for an attempt at a full saga playthrough. We're going for triple crown rules here, as I haven't done these for the second game yet - originally this meant: Path of the Damned, Trial of Iron, Expert Mode. Deadfire also adds full level scaling (only upwards) into the mix, so we're also going to activate level scaling in the first game (no blessings or god challenges). Due to the way scaling is handled in PoE1, we need to be fairly high level to activate it, so we're going for more of a completionist approach, though the same won't be true for Deadfire, where level scaling is active throughout the game, and we propably won't be doing much DLC content and certainly zero megabosses again.

This time around I'm going with a custom party, with a light RP theme centered around the Watcher. Thayn Goron is a nobleman from Aedyr (Meadow Folk - Aedyr - Aristocrat) who used to own a large estate but has been exiled from his homeland due to a power struggle with another, more powerful noble family (let's just say that he tried to improve his position, gambled too high and lost). He has left towards the former aedyran colony of Dyrwood, accompanied only by his most loyal retainers (which will be the future party). The (former) Thayn is trained as a chanter, and his aim is to re-establish a position of power in this foreign land, in the hope of one day gaining back his posessions in Aedyr.

In terms of statistics, we start with Might 10, Constitution 13, Dexterity 10, Perception 13, Intellect 18 and Resolve 14. Decent resolve and constitution means we can play near or at the frontline, and Goron will mostly be found there, as a secondary tank while chanting, using invocations and casting spells from scrolls.
As such, our talent choices will tend towards the defensive - I aim for weapon and shield style, ancient memory/beloved spirits, superior deflection, hold the line and the like as important picks for the earlier parts of the game. In terms of chants, we start with "Come, Come Soft Winds of Death" and "At the Sight of their Comrades, their Hearts Grew Bold", and we're planning to add "Blessed was Wengridh, Quickest of His Tribe", "Sure-Handed Ila Nocked her Arrows with Speed", "Lo, their Endless Host, the Harbingers of Doom", "The Dragon Thrashed, The Dragon Wailed" and "Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr" in the forseeable future. Crucial early/midgame invocations should be "But Reny Daret's Ghost, He Would Not Rest", "At the Sound of his Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff" and "Oh, But Knock not on the Door of Urdel and Gurdel", plus a few lesser used ones. I plan for him to either stay a regular chanter or maybe become a beckoner in PoE2, if we get to that point.

As for the five followers of the Thayn, there's Cymedrol, his bodyguard - used to be a mercenary, but is following the Thayn into exile out of loyalty (he can't afford to pay anymore). He's a fighter, as you can imagine (Meadow Folk, Aedyr, Mercenary), and will be serving as our primary tank, with 16 resolve and constitution, 12 dexterity and 14 intellect (other stats left on 10) - the high intellect has the dual-purpose of increasing prone durations from knockdown/overbearing guard plus his self-buff and scroll durations, but also allowing for the potential of multiclassing into some kind of fighter/wizard (maybe Unbroken/Illusionist) in Deadfire. Obviously, he is going to take talents to increase survivability and help with the engagement mechanic.

Our second follower is Doador, a missionary of Eothas from Old Vaila (Priest of Eothas, Ocean Folk, Old Vaila, Colonist) whom Thayn Goron allowed to stay at his court to preach and find new disciples. Thankful for the Thayns protection, he has followed him to Dyrwood. He's focused on intellect (19) and dexterity (18) and a tiny bit on might (11) - in other words, his job is to apply a large number of AoE-Buffs on the party as quickly as possible. His talent chioces will, at first, almost exclusively improve his interdiction and his radiance. He will stay a single class Eothasian priest in Deadfire.

Next, we have Sjáanda, a mysterious glamfellen Cipher from The White that Wends, traveling around the lands for her own reasons (Pale Elf, The White that Wends, Drifter), who has apparently sees some kind of potential in Thayn Goron and decided to follow him, though she's not very open about why, exactly. She will be our mechanics person and starts with very high perception (20 - as detecting traps shifts from mechanics to perception in Deadfire), 13 dexterity/intellect and 12 might. As a ranged damage dealer and crowd control specialist, she will take spells like Whisper of Treason, Mental Binding, Puppet Master, Silent Scream or Ringleader, among other more rarely used abilities, plus stuff like draining/biting whip, marksman, a weapon focus (propably adventurer), apprentice's sneak attack and the like. I'm somewhat interested into turning her into an ascendant in Deadfire.

Thayn Goron's lands were located on the eastern coast of Aedyr, and there on the coast lived Nerthol, a coastal Amauna druid (Aedyr - Hunter) who would help the nearby fishermen by calming dangerous storms, if they behaved in ways she considered to be respectful towards the sea. Nerthol got into trouble with the Thayn's rivals as she suspected them not to honor her ways, and so she had to join Goron into exile. She will go for my usual spiritshift/lightning damage focused approach, with wildstrike shock and all the talents that boost spiritshifting, plus heart of the storm. Her best stats are might/dexterity/percetion 14 and intellect 16. She might or might not take a subclass in Deadfire - I'm not sure, and all of them seem somewhat interesting, so I will have to think about that one.

Finally, we have Saeth, a wood elf ranger (Aedyr - Hunter) who used to serve as the loyal gamekeeper of the Thayn. As you can imagine, we're boosting her animal companion with talents such as resilient/vicious companion and her ranged abilities with an early "vicious aim" modal plus anything that would improve accuracy, and, later on, damage. She starts with might/dexterity/perception at 16. If we make it to Deadfire, which only allows for a party of 5, she will propably be the party member we will have to leave behind.

As you can see, our race/culture/background choices are generally not ideal, mechanically speaking, and more centered around the theme of the group, but that should have very little impact on gameplay over all.

Thayn Goron has decided to send his retinue ahead of the rather slow moving caravan, in order to prepare his arrival in Gilded Vale - which is why he has to deal with the opening by himself, helped only be Heodan and Calisca - he gets to try out his phantom summon, which is very strong in the first game (not so much in Deadfire) as it acts like a rogue, with sneak attack and even the ability to stun on hit:

Spoiler

Well, we reach level 2 and directly move to Gilded Vale without engaging in any battles - we want to recruit our party first. However, Gaun's Share didn't appear in my starting inventory (which is very strange - I checked, I have it installed, I even re-installed it and checked with a new game - and it didn't appear there as well), so we're quite short on cash - in fact, we had to sell Aloth's gear and an endurance potion to actually recruit everyone right away.

Now that that's out of the way, we can start our adventure.

 

[Enuhal]

Six Crowns for a Singer: Thayn Goron's Triple Crown Full Saga Run - Update 1: The Road to Caed Nua

Now that our party is assembled, we're travelling back to Valewood, taking down some bandits, wolves and the bear cave. The bears are known for their very high damage output, but we have very strong tools against them - both whisper of treason and charm beasts can get us a huge advantage in combat, and our priests interdiction is the perfect way to lower will defenses beforehand:

Spoiler

Our travels lead us to Esternwood, where we pick up a fine arbalest at the graveyard, and, while sneaking through black meadow on our way to Madhmr Bridge, we find another one - great! That means both Sjáanda and Saeth can start out with a great weapon. In terms of armor, we don't buy anything this time around, instead sticking to medium armor that we find (mostly chainmail or breastplates) for most of the party early on, while the Thayn and his bodyguard will use the heaviest armor pieces (brigandines, mostly). The others will switch to lighter armor once we find good unique ones. While in Black Meadow, we also retrieve the Smith's Shipment and suffer our first injury: Doador gets shot down early on by enemy ranged attackers, but we're able to turn the tables with whisper of treason and a phantom summon:

Spoiler

At the bridge, we take on some xaurips, trolls and looters for relatively easy experience and move on to Anslog's Compass. The Hermit's Hat is our go-to weapon against dank spores:

Spoiler

Here's the battle against the xaurip camp: Blessing and Armor of Faith are staples, same as Nature's Mark and Whisper of Treason:

Spoiler

We move on to Magran's Fork, where we use the powers of our druid, Nerthol, (who has reached level 3) to paralyze the dangerous groups of wolves and, especially, boars:

Spoiler

Since spiritshift forms deal a ton of damage even early on, we even take on tougher monsters like the forest lurkers, though their damage can be quite rough (in fact, Thayn Goron gets injured there once in what was essentially a one hit knockout). Trolls, which we find a ton of in the Black Meadow, are tough as well, but we're quite well prepared for these - they are slow, and we have some great early druid fire damage spells such as burst of summer flame and sunbeam - plus, they can easily be charmed by Sjáanda:

Spoiler

It should also be noted that we've been pushing our survival skill early on and made use of the accuracy bonus against wilders early on for these xaurip and troll battles quite a bit.

 

[Enuhal]

The Temple of Eothas remains before we travel to Caed Nua (Raedric will have to wait until later), and my lack of recent gameplay experience shows as I rest with an accuracy bonus against spirits before entering - however, on level 1 there are no spirits yet - they're all in level 2, so we should've propably used the one against beasts for the spiders or wilders for the skuldr battles. One of the latter ones got us into big trouble and came fairly close to ending the run (well, the Temple of Eothas is known to do that): While we did get this skuldr king and companions into a good chokepoint and had foodbuffs, recently bought from the nearby inn, active, we still weren't prepared to take that much damage. Cymedrol suffered a knockout (his health nearly dropping low enough for a permanent death) and the Thayn got very close to suffering the same fate as we used up all our remaining spells and resources to save his life:

Spoiler

We really should have just rested a bit earlier on, as we were already somewhat low in health going into this battle. As we make it to downstairs, we actually get to face the shadows and shades we were expecting. Shadows are somewhat dangerous due to their ability to teleport into our backline, but shades are the real killer here - not only can they summon shadows, their ice damage ranged attack is devasting - this is Saeth's endurance after a single hit:

Spoiler

Basically, two hits will kill pretty much anyone - which is why we try our best to crowd control these shades as much as possible (the survival bonus to accuracy helps a lot) - knockdown and mental binding are decent options:

Spoiler

Another effective tool is fire damage, as these enemies are quite vulnerable to it - divine mark, burst of summer flame, sunbeam etc.:

Spoiler

We go for a second rest after this battle, fight a few oozes and have to take on a big skuldr group for the finale. This one goes quite well: We're able to protect our backline with our two tanks and the ranger pet while using priest buffs, druid AoE damage and our ranged arbalest attacks to win out.

Spoiler

As you can see, since spell availabilty is low early on, we're also adding additional damage sources such as fan of flames via scroll into the mix.

Well, the party is still mostly at level 3 (the Watcher is generally one level above everyone else, since custom recruits start one level below the main character), but we have hopes of getting everyone to level 4 right before facing Maerwald. First, though, we have to take on the feared spirit groups that guard Caed Nua. We have around 5k gold at this point, and after thinking about it for a while, I decide to invest it into the Bronze Horn Figurine, which could get us a decisive advantage for the toughest battles there.

 

[Enuhal]

Six Crowns for a Singer: Thayn Goron's Triple Crown Full Saga Run - Update 2: Claiming a Castle

This is why phantoms are so dangerous in the early game - Cymedrol starts out with full hitpoints, even buffed with a potion of wizard's double, when he gets hit, this triggers a decently long stun effect, which in turn lowers his deflection:

Spoiler

And while we use mental binding (assisted by interdiction) and our own phantom to control as many enemy spirits as possible, just a few hits (happening all while our priest recovers from interdiction and starts casting supress affliction - this is why we need high dexterity, but we can't afford to wear light armor or robes just yet) are enough to almost kill him - a whisp even gets a confusion effect in:

Spoiler

Luckily, supress affliction hits just in time and our fighter heals up with second wind, so we don't end up taking an injury here:

Spoiler

The folllowing battles in the courtyard go quite well. Our ranger once gets knocked out by a flame blight due to my own carelessness, but we make it to the great hall without having to rest at all. Because I still haven't used my animat figurine, I decide to take this fight as well before the planned rest - the animat is quite strong in the early levels, we have some more food to help us out and whisper of treason to sway one of the spirits to our side:

Spoiler

This actually went quite well, considering that I definitely should have rested instead of pushing on:

Spoiler

Downstairs, after clearing the dungeons and resting for a moment, we discover that we're super close to the party hitting level 4. I decide to explore the surroundings before challenging Maerwald, as I assume that beastiary and lockpicking/trap XP should be enough to get us there. Some looters, some spiders, some beeltes - and there we go:

Spoiler

Just to be sure, we rest one more time before facing Maerwald, though we take the accuracy bonus against beasts, which doesn't help with the old watcher, but if we don't lose too much health, we can use it to push on towards the spider queen to clear out the first endless paths level and maybe even for the lions at the wooded plains for hearth harvest. After talking to Maerwald, we immediately run out of his room:

Spoiler

As you can see, Maerwald opened with chill fog and ended up hitting his own blights with it. Nice. Well, the blights kind of block our enemy, and we have to show ourselves again to get them all to follow us. Maerwald, this time around, tries fireballing our fleeing party, but once again ends up hitting his blights:

Spoiler

Meanwhile Thayn Goron has been getting a phantom summon in there which gives us some time to buff up for the battle. Maerwald is still very unwilling to leave his room, but eventually we get him to the doorway - by now, we have gained three more phrases and can summon a phantom directly behind him. Now he's flanked and we can easily take him down:

Spoiler

That went quite well! One of my better Maerwald battles.

Well, this also means that we have the health and resources to take down the spider queen - Nerthol has charm & hold beasts ready to do some work:

Spoiler

And since Doador still has first level spells (which includes prayer against fear), as we move out towards Defiance Bay, we indeed take the fight for Hearth Harvest (though no other battles) at the Wooded Plains, also making use of our freshly gained watcher power:

Spoiler

Thayn Goron has his own lands and estate once again - and we will invest a lot of our money into re-building the keep (with a general focus on prestige in hopes of getting some juicy adventure rewards).

 

[JustKneller]

I really want to get into this game/series. I like the devs, I like the premise, and I like some of the classes. However, every time I play, I pretty much get to the personal stronghold and then just lose interest. The stronghold itself isn't the problem, though. I'm doing a thing where I'm trying to play through all the games I've bought, but never finished. I really hit a wall with this one, though.

1) I have a love/hate relationship with the rule system. Giving every stat both a social and combat value (love), the double health bars (hate), the complexity of some elements (love/hate). I think some of the complexity is superfluous and it could have been streamlined better.

2) Party dynamics vs. story. Ok, so if you want NPCs that add to the story, you're going with Aloth (who I would like better as a Rogue, probably), Durance (grating, but I see his value), and Eder (who I just straight up like, but I wish was statted better). Kana is there, but he's more of a side piece. All three are pretty crap for damage and Eder is the only tank. Pallegina is kinda early enough to help Eder hold the line, but it's still a rough start. Even on normal difficulty, optimized for tanking, Ederstill dies (or is gravely injured) a fair bit. He just can't hold the line by himself. I can build a striker Cipher to up the offense and end battles sooner, but that makes for a crappy story character. I can build a tanky paladin, which is great for story and fills out the front line, but my offence is still rubbish.

3) The gameplay loop. I find it to be particularly repetitive, even for the genre. Stealth has little value. There's no real tactical element. There's a bit of micro with Ciphers and Chanters, but not much really. It's just click and out-DPS the opposition. Some of the fights can be visually appealing, but that's about it for me. It would have been cool if they aimed for something like ToEE (turn-based, more tactical, more choices).

This is why my runs don't really make it past the stronghold. I get annoyed that I have to chose between a synergistic party or a good story party and then bored of just clicking stuff to kill it. Oddly enough, for how simple the combat system boils down to, I would probably play the crap out of PoE if it was JRPG style. At least the rule system would match the actual complexity and I can speed grind the combat. And, I'm not trying to crap on what is clearly a generally valued game. It's just kind of a bummer when you really, really want to like something but it just doesn't stick.

 

[Enuhal]

Towards your first point, the double health bars eventually get eliminated in the second game. I don't think they're much of a problem in practice in PoE1 (though I do prefer their absence in Deadfire), because if your party has a few vancian spellcasters, the times you would want to rest due to health reasons often line up quite well with the times you want to rest for spell slots (unless you don't use your spells).

As for 2), my personal experience is that, while they are certainly not optimized, the official NPCs can handle anything the game throws at you just fine when properly buffed and supported with the various available tools (food, potions, scrolls, especially priest buffs, and very defensive equipment); I've done PotD playthroughs with only Edér tanking and ones with only Pallegina tanking, and while they're obviously weaker than a watcher tank (especially Pallegina, who is propably better used in a supporting damage dealer role due to her unique paladin subclass), they can do the job if needed (though they do profit from having a secondary frontliner to help out). It all comes down to positioning: If your tank gets flanked and killed, the best solution is usually to draw the enemy towards a chokepoint where only 1-2 of your foes can attack you, which works in pretty much every dungeon. Obviously some outside areas can be tricky, but aside from Magran's Fork at super early levels and Elmshore upon reaching Act 3, none of them are especially tough (unless you're doing White March content without a priest, which can be quite deadly). Personally I don't like Durance's low dexerity, but being a priest will always make him valuable, and the others do just fine within their given roles (Aloth alone is able to turn the tides of most battles, as there are some insanely powerful level 1 wizard spells such as chill fog available). The one non-ideal thing is that you can't get to a full party before Caed Nua, which does incentivize you to recruit at least 1-2 custom NPCs. Deadfire has a similiar problem - it takes a bit too long to get your party to full size with only official companions, considering that some of the most challenging combat is found early on - but the NPCs are better suited for combat and bring very powerful unique subclasses with them (especially Maia, Xoti and Tekehu, who can do some very powerful things no watcher or custom NPC can do).

The value of stealth is mostly for scouting/stealing, skipping some battles for quests that can done in a non-violent way once you reach a certain NPC (for exampled in Dyrford Ruins or Noonfrost) or for solo play - but yeah, it's not super neccessary; It's more powerful in the second game as well by quite a bit (your first combat action out of stealth has an extremely low recovery time), but I don't see how PoE1 has no tactical elements. At least on PotD (I haven't played on other difficulties in many years, so I can't speak to that), combat, especially in the early game, often comes down to careful positioning of your party to avoid getting swarmed, precise and well-timed use of buffs to counter or prevent enemy afflictions, debuffing to weaken specific already weak enemy defenses to gain a valuable advantage, well-considered use of crowd control on key opponents... the existence of the four different types of defenses alone opens up a vast array of opportunities and becomes even more important in Deadfire.

Honestly, I think the biggest problems of PoE1 are storyline related. The pacing is a off, there's a lot of exposition but very little actual story development early in the game, and the story, at first, is not presented in the most compelling way for me. Things only really get going at the very end of Act 2 and, most of all, in Act 3 - during my first playthrough I was really only invested in the game for the combat mechanics (though I truly did love those) until I got to Twin Elms, when I suddenly developed much more of an interest in the story (and Deadfire really got me interested in the worldbuilding - exposition is handled much better in the sequel, in my opinion, though the main quest storyline pacing is still questionable, but that will always be the case in game focused on exploration). The only big gameplay criticism (aside from priests being a bit too strong compared to other classes) I really have for PoE1 is that some of the areas are just too tightly packed with groups of enemies, especially in the first expansion. Fewer but more memorable combat encounters are always better in my book (and Deadfire imo does improve on the original in that regard).

 

[Enuhal]

Six Crowns for a Singer: Thayn Goron's Triple Crown Full Saga Run - Update 3: Defiance Bay

The party enters Defiance Bay. There are a few non-violent quests here, but not nearly as many as in Deadfire - but we try to do those where you only have to fight a single group of enemies first - if we can go all-out on spells and use our statue summons (in addition to the animat, we find a wood beetle figurine near the theater, and, later on, a shade figurine at the VTC HQ), a lot of these battles aren't too difficult to handle. The first one actually takes us out of the city, as we find the scroll for "The Parable of Wael" - an attack from stealth by both of our arbalest users plus wood beetles and whisper of treason get us a decisive advantage:

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For "His Old Self", we have the advantage of pre-positioning our party on the future battlefield - we also use the animat here, and the sure-handed ila chant really helps out the arbalests:

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The final battle in Copperlane for now, the start of "A Two Story Job" is made a lot easier by paralyzing the enemy wizard via mental binding:

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Not much fighting to be done in First Fires and Brackenbury - the Two Story Job break-in is done without being discovered:

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However, it seems like I forgot how to peacefully get back Osric's Breastplate for "Rogue Knight", so we end up having to fight Penhelm and his friends:

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By now we have access to returning storm, which helps out a lot with these mid-game battles; We've started the Yenwood Field questline, travelling between the Keep and Defiance Bay a few times. In an early keep adventure, we get the Night Mirror Fragment, which allows for 5 total AoE applications of Frightened and Sickened, a bit like a different interdiction - I'm quite impressed with it, as seen here during "Built to Last":

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However, you might notice the enemy priest in the background casting pillar of faith - that one would go on to hit Doador, and being prone opens him up to more attacks, eventually knocking him out - our first bit of trouble since we entered the city:

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Luckily we're otherwise already in a good position for this battle and don't suffer any more casualties:

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There's a bit more fighting here in Ondra's Gift. Since we haven't used our figurines earlier on, we use them for "All Hands on Decke" before resting:

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There's also the animats, adra animats and rain blights in the water - the adra animats are quite high level but aren't very good at actually dealing damage, and the battles are surprisingly easy for us:

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Since we're leaving "The Whailing Banshee" and "The Forgotten" for later, we head for the catacombs next - first to do "A Voice from the Past" - this time chosing the more violent option as I don't want to run back and forth too much here, and none of the battles are too difficult:

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We infiltrate the Leaden Key meeting downstairs and also take on "The Man Who Waits" in Brackenbury - no trouble here, and Doador's radiance is especially powerful here with all these vessels to battle. Getting involved in this part of the main quest also allows us to pick up "The Final Act", where a "Puppet Master" domination on Lumdala quickly gives us a big advantage:

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We haven't used most of our cash for now (though a lot of it has gone towards the stronghold and some bribes for certain quests), buying only extremely impactful stuff like the wildstrike belt for Nerthol, some vithrack brains (whenever we return to the city, as the VTC merchant's inventory is restocked - we will need these later on) and shod-in-faith. Heritage Hill can wait for now; Level 6 is maybe a bit early for this, but I want to explore the first half of the Endless Paths next, specifically to get Persistence and Ilfan Bryngar's Solace, two long-term upgrades for our party, plus a lot of cash to buy a few new weapons in Defiance Bay. We have scrolls of defense and of protection plus the materials to craft more, so we should propably be fine, but those ogre druids can be quite difficult to deal with - insect plague this early in the game is no joke. Let's see how it goes.

 

[JustKneller]

I've done PotD playthroughs with only Edér tanking and ones with only Pallegina tanking, and while they're obviously weaker than a watcher tank (especially Pallegina, who is propably better used in a supporting damage dealer role due to her unique paladin subclass)

How do you have Eder hold the line by himself in PotD? Even on normal, he got dropped like a sack of potatoes in some of the tougher encounters in my games. Even the moderate ones, I had to keep a close eye on him. And Pallegina for damage? I've never heard of that. But her stats are weird and mostly mid. Her only good stat is Res, which is defensive. I guess I can see her as damage since she's average at pretty much everything. Sworn Enemy isn't terrible, but I found it didn't make or break and offense.

There were definitely complex moving parts in the combat (compared to a game like BG), but some of them worked against each other. One of the problems I had with Eder as a sole tank was that he often couldn't hold aggro. Defensively focused, he couldn't dish out enough damage to keep the enemies' attention. Meanwhile, my back line was "safely" dishing out damage...but only for a moment. This would pull aggro from the front line which would break and blow past Eder to get to my squishy strikers. Instead, the backline is safer as controllers if you want to keep the aggro up front. But, then where is your damage coming from? You kinda need to spread it out so no one person really draws too much aggro and the front line can hold. That means good Mig/Res, decent Dex/Con, and Per/Int comes last. But, none of the NPCs really have that. Aloth is Dex/Int, Durance is Int/Res (and decent Mig), and Eder is Mig/Con.

However, I must be missing something. Durance tanks for crap and he should be halfway decent (aside from crappy Ref). Eder has enough Mig to hold aggro, yet he doesn't, even with a controller back line. Or, when he does hold aggro, a couple of decent mobs can drop him fast, even with the best defensive gear. I dunno...

I agree with you that the story pacing could have been better. However, I appreciated that it also didn't have the sense of urgency that BG had. I kinda liked that the prologue gave you a plan that fell through and now you were a stranger in a strange land and left to your own devices from there.

 

[Enuhal]

If you compare Edér to the current main tank in my playthrough, the only defensive stat he's lower in is 3 points of resolve, which is 3 deflection, which is a nice thing to have but doesn't make or break a tank, especially when supported by a priest with spells like armor of faith (later on there are tons of buffs that improve deflection, and form of the delemgarn from a druid is great for armor rating - in general, buffs, potions, scrolls and even the very cheap food are usually more impactful than small stat differences). With the heaviest armor & shield available to him he will do no worse or better than most other fighters (though I prefer medium or even small shields, even on a tank). Every tank struggles in the early game on PotD, no matter the stats, which is why crowd control, lowering enemy accuracy and use of chokepoints are absolutely crucial.
The reason Pallegina is sometimes used as a supporting damage dealer is her Vielo Vidòrio talent. Attack speed boosts in general are quite strong in PoE1, and flames devotion is a good offensive ability once enough accuracy is acquired. She can be made into a pretty good dualwielder with medium armor, assisting with of enemies that get past the main tank, dealing some damage and supporting the party with paladin abilities such as lay on hands and her exhortations. Then again, her stats, as you pointed out, are very mediocre, so she can be pushed in pretty much any direction and propably won't be great, but okay at it.

PoE doesn't have an aggro mechanic per se (though enemies tend to "notice" characters when they first deal damage to them and, without engagement, might try to go after them). Enemies mostly have a tendency to target party members with low armor rating and deflection, and the one thing that will stop them is either the engagement mechanic or chokepoints, which is why positioning is the most important part of a lot of battles (and later on, even on more open maps, you can create chokpoints with figurines and summons). In the early game, I prefer to have every party member (even the exlusively ranged ones, which usually make up most of them) in heavy armor, because the tools to prevent them from getting attacked aren't entirely there yet. Most enemies will not break engagement, so if you have enough engagement slots and make sure you don't get flanked at the same time (though that doesn't matter too much later on), this helps a lot (and if they do try to break it, having talents such as overbearing guard will punish them - though I don't see this happening a lot in my current run, and I usually prefer a paladin tank anyway).

I personally wouldn't attempt to use Durance in any tanky capacity. Priests have horrible starting stats for tanking (it's all about deflection vs. accuracy, and priests start with a horrible 15 deflection, while fighters for example start with 30, chanters/monks with 25. Paladins only have 20 but they gain a boost with with their automatic "Faith and Conviction" talent), and later on I really wouldn't want him to wear any kind of heavy armor (though he needs it in the early game) because his dexterity is so low already that his action speed will just suffer too much.

The game in general gets much easier once you make it to Defiance Bay, so if getting there is a struggle, hiring just one custom NPC (to fill up the party, maybe getting in a cipher for that juicy whisper of treason) does a lot of work. Once you're there and get to levels 5 and 7, the new level 3/4 spells make a huge difference and the availability of more companions such as Sagani, Hiravias and Grieving Mother heavily widens the strategic potential of any party.

Of course, you can always just create your Watcher as a tank if Edér doesn't do the job Looking back at my old runs, this is what I did during my first time playing PotD - a Shieldbearer of St. Elgca Watcher with only official companions, those being Maneha, Sagani, Hiravias, Grieving Mother and Durance.

 

[Antimatter]

I finished PoE with minimal reloads in 2019, and I still remember that run. It took me 300+ hours to get used to the game (lol) and finally understand all its mechanics. I would say that for the good half of those 300 hours I couldn't defeat certain enemies (such as dragons) at all (ofc, on PotD) as my party composition, their skills, equipment etc wasn't "ideal" for the type of approach I used. Here are screenshots from that game the moment I killed the Adra Dragon, I think they should at least serve as some kind of an example of how to set up your party, @JustKneller (in case you decide to give the game a go and come back to this post later). Eder was my tank, and his tankiness even allowed to wield a two-handed sword. Ofc, my Cipher ALSO being a tank helped a lot. I enjoyed Pallegina as a balanced character (also with a small buckler), my Kana was a two-hander wielder (and with a bigger reach, he used Durance's staff!), and I used Aloth to mostly CC, while Durance stayed ~in the middle between the main melee line and the far missile distance.

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Overall, defense > offense in this game, so just plan from the sword & board (as you can see, almost everyone used that in my run, with a few obvious accents on offense, e.g. Kana), and you'll be fine.

 

[O_Bruce]

Story: better in Pillars of Eternity I
Gameplay & mechanics: better in Pillars of Eternity II
Gods:

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worthless double-crossing bastards in both games

Doing runs like in this topic for rpgs like Pillars or Baldur's Gate is not my cup of tea, but I appreciate your efforts in completing your run. Myself, I never beat the game without reloading or/and on Path of the Damned, but maybe at least one of those is on the table for the future.

 

[Enuhal]

Six Crowns for a Singer: Thayn Goron's Triple Crown Full Saga Run - Update 4: The Endless Paths, Level II-VII

The Endless Paths level 2 is fairly easy - it's just xaurips. A lof ot them, but just xaurips in the end. Level 3 is where things get really interesting - the ogres by themselves are not too troubling - while they are tough, deal a lot of damage and tend to knock party members down, the real problem are the ogre druids, who have access to 5th level spells (which we are far, far away from at this point) - there can be huge groups with up to 3 ogre druids here, and even one insect plague, which has a huge radius, hitting the party, can be dangerous - multiples are almost certainly deadly without extra protections.
It's always a good idea to pull the groups here pretty far back with a fast character (our fighter has +1 movespeed due to his unique armor) - ideally, the druids open with insect plague and actually miss everyone with the spell because the fighter is already out of the radius and everyone else is far away - but usually we aren't so lucky and they open with other spells. The other main method of dealing with this is to buff the party with scrolls of defense and protection (protection cuts the duration of insect plague and any other debuffs in half), plus, of course, crowd control on the druids - all ogres have weak will defense, so a cipher can do well with mental binding, whisper/puppet master, and, as you can see in the following screenshot, Thayn Goron himself has the "At the Sound of His Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff" invocation in order to paralyze entire groups of ogres, though it takes a long time to build up the phrases:

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The low health on everyone here is just the restult of a single insect plague (though without protective scrolls). One good thing for us: Soon after entering the level, we get everyone to level 7, which means 4th level spells are now available. Devotions of the Faithful, Form of the Delemgan, but, especially, Calling the World's Maw - which is great at neutralizing an enemy backline full of spellcasters, as the AoE prone effect does great work. Here's another big ogre group, but this time we have the defensive scrolls going and interrupt them aggressively with Calling the World's Maw - much better for our health:

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Next group - good job Thayn Goron! 4 ogres paralyzed with one invocation:

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We rest for a second time, and the big group protecting Zolla, the ogre boss, awaits. We've been using the survival bonus against wilders to our advantage for a while now (the xaurips at level 2 were wilders as well). Cymedrol is able to pull Zolla and her crew back to a much better position and we hit her with everything we have. We add devotions and even despondent blows to our previous arsenal, Calling the World's Maw hits our enemies like a truck - we don't even need to use the protective scrolls, our crowd control is so strong that none of the enemy spellcasters gets to finish an insect plague:

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That's the scariest level (or so we thought) out of the way for now, and we move downstairs to level 4, where there are beetles and oozes waiting for us. I consistently underestimate this level, feeling relieved after being done with the ogre druids - Not enough resting, not enough care with pulls, the fact that oozes have strong ranged attacks that can go after non-tanks and beetles can burrow into our backline - and suddenly Nerthol is almost dead:

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As you can see we're basically out of spells, not having rested at all since before the Zolla battle (and this is near the end of level 4 - plus, obviously the anti-wilder bonus is useless here). Nerthol is able to run and kite the burrowing beetles for a bit:

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One of the wood beetles burrows directly onto her and takes her out, but luckily it's only her endurance going to zero, not her health. The remainder of the group is strong enough to finish the job:

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That was rather careless of us. Time to pay a bit more attention at level 5 - another xaurip level, with higher level and bigger groups. At the end there's a drake waiting, but we have prayer against fear and aren't afraid to throw our scrolls and figurines into the mix:

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Maybe a bit overkill, but we don't want to take any chances after the near-disaster at level 4. Now we have Persistance (for Saeth) and Ilfan Bryngar's Solace (for Cymedrol), which is what we came for - but level 6 and level 7 aren't too difficult or long (except for the final group of level 7, but I always skip that one for this "first part of the endless paths" clear-out), so we press on for a bit. Level 6 is just some skeletons (a good way to get ready for Heritage Hill) - Nerthol shows us how to really Call the World's Maw:

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The skeletal wizards here deal a good amount of ranged damage, but they are limited in their spells and everything else is fairly harmless, so we pick up a nice unique scale armor and move to level 7, which is a level full of blights. Knowledge of their immunities and weaknesses is basically all that is needed here - screenshots from the fire and the wind room:

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To my surprise there was a single adragan in the earth room, which did kind of shock and scare me, but, Sjáanda was able to paralyze it with mental binding and we took it out immediately before any charm and petrification shenanigans occured. We leave with a new wand, Elawen Ein, which Doador gets to use for a while (the accuracy reduction on hit is nice).

One reason we've been staying in the Endless Paths for so long is that we've been waiting for the 17th day of the month in order to get a pair of gloves of manipulation from Raedric's Dungeons (I've looked that up on the wiki; Since we're planning to upsale all content, there are some very high level traps awaiting us in both Galawain's Maw and The White March, so we need these):

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We arrived there on the 16th and had some time to kill, so we cleared out the keep for some extra gold. We're very overleved for poor Raedric at this point:

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With all the money we've gained now, we buy some crucial missing pieces in our weapon arsenal, most notably Shatterstar for Cymedrol and Borresaine for Sjáanda, and enchant some of the new gear. The times of arbalests + heavy armor are over now.