Pathfinder

Bought and started playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Seems fun and challenging so far.

It’s captivating, but I’m not sure I’m actually having fun. My save scumming is rampant.

Playing Pathfinder. Day well spent.

I kind of want to start a new game to try out different characters, but I think going through the linear story again will be annoying.

Playing Pathfinder. Or rather figuring out how to use custom portraits. It feels a bit silly thing to spend time on this, but I feel like if I don’t spend my time on somewhat silly things then there’s simply nothing to do.

Somehow managed to do things differently enough to bear replaying the same stuff with my new party. It’s quite hard to level up in this game because it’s so “open world” that where ever you go randomly explore you find enemies way stronger than your party.

Closing at 100 hours, Kingmaker is the second most played game on my Steam list, after Stellaris. The sequel sounds like I will spend even more time with it, but going to wait for a while before starting it in order to spread my gaming a bit. I might even catch it a a sale. I wonder what kind of hours I put in certain games before the era of Steam logging the hours. I think ADOM would be there at 1000+ hours, and that not counting the time I watched my friends play it. Even games like Fallout 2, which I would now consider too repetitive to play more than twice or so — probably played 200 hours of that game. Time was so cheap when I was a kid. Later the same happened with anime — I have no idea how I managed to watch all those shows, when now I struggle to watch a single season of anything.

Playing Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. This game is so long.

Started replaying Pathfinder WotR. Or actually I just wanted to build some charcters and spent the large majority of time at that with a respec mod to build also the companions from scratch (mostly).

https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/q9dkmg/this_games_dungeon_crawling_experience/ This made me laugh so hard I need to quote it in full:

After the long journey back to Drezen, I sell my haul of 800 lbs of cloaks of resistance+2, and I decide to go for a quick rest before adventuring again. Skipping through the 27 crusade events that pop the moment I enter the citadel, one of them catches my attention: it looks like Grandma Jensen needs the help of an experienced adventurer to get rid of the rats infesting her home. I smile to myself: Finally, a quest worthy of the commander of the crusade.

After opening the world map, I let out a sigh of relief: luckily, the journey to Grandma’s house, in the center of the Worldwound, will only take me about 6 days. I click on the nearest node in the map, and open one of the games in my phone while I wait for the 20 minutes that it will take my party to get there. To my dismay, I hear a loud sound: it seems like I’ve been ambushed. The battle is hard fought, but after a couple minutes the flying demonic meatballs lie dead at my feet. Even better, they don’t drop any loot, so the risk of my party being over encumbered is averted. I resurrect Greybor and go back to the world map. After 17 more ambushes, 6 random events and the skeletal merchant, I wait while one of my armies clears the 4 demon forts along the way. Quickly tracing my steps back for about 10 minutes to find the correct path, I finally reach Grandma’s house. Now the REAL fun begins.

As soon as I load into the area, I am greeted by the rat envoy: a long conversation and a cutscene ensues, after which I am immediately attacked by 4 melee rats, 6 ranger rats and two casting rodents. A mythic Glabrezu that was delivering Amazon packages also decides to join the enemy, and they quickly overrun my party. It was my own fault, I think to myself: I really got outplayed, and should have expected a fight as soon as I entered the zone. After many attempts and unskippable cutscenes I win the fight and remove Greybor’s negative levels and ability damage. I use all my buffs and decide that it is now time to enter the house.

The inside of the house is about what I expected: small rooms with extremely narrow corridors. While mentally making fun of all those fools out there that decided to play cavalier, one of my characters detects 3 traps in a hallway. It’s okay, I think, Woljif will handle it. However, I was overconfident once again: it seems there was something wrong with the pathing, and Woljif triggers all three traps: sirocco, cloudkill and blade barrier. It looks like Grandma really valued her privacy. Loading the latest save, I overcome this new obstacle, and after some easy fights, I notice a new pack of rats. Three seconds after the fight begins, Greybor explodes into a gory mess. Something is wrong, I realize, and inspect all the different rats. Seems like I made another mistake, one of these rats is not like the others: this is a Mildly Inconvinienced rat, a level 42 enemy with 86 AC and a fear aura that pierces all resistances. I mentally prepare for a long and arduous fight: this is going to be rough.

3 hours and many buffs later, I roll 42 NAT 20s in a row and deal enough damage to overcome the rat’s natural healing. And not a moment too soon, as I was sure it was preparing to instantly cast mirror image once again. These enemies drop no loot, but I notice three chests in the room they were defending. In one of said chests, I loot a chainmail+1, some rings of protection and a +2 unholy Tongi that deals bonus damage against lawful good enemies and is only equippable by neutral evil characters. My mind races with all the different possibilities for new builds that such a weapon enables. The other two chests require a level 45 trickery check, which Woljif overcomes with the help of some lockpicks. My reward for such a feat is a bunch of shiny stones and a masterwork cold iron falcata.

Making my way to Grandma’s kitchen, the final room in this dungeon, I prepare myself for a tough boss fight, but I am instead greeted by a familiar voice: Grandma Jensen is here, looks like she is actually a demon and has been deceiving me the entire time! After passing some perception checks and lamenting not being able to select the 6 different Angel mythic path choices, the boss fight begins. However, Succubus Jensen is not Mildly Inconvenienced, is fighting by herself, and has only 36 AC. The ensuing fight is quick and bloody, as I easily dispatch this demonic agent. While waiting for my min-maxed mercenary Ecclesitheurge to cast resurrection on Greybor, I decide to check people’s experiences with this particular dungeon in reddit, and find a post with someone complaining about the difficulty. With a smug grin, I prepare to write an essay about how easy the entire dungeon was with my Neoseeker Lich-Sorcerer build, crack my knuckles, and begin typing…