Pillars of Eternity - Exploration thread

2015-04-07 07:05:27 pm

Quote from ogam:

Movement speed works outside of combat also, it's pretty noticeable

If it does, then there's some boots of speed that (can?) drop in a box in Maerwald's basement. But if it's only one pair, then the other party members can't keep up, so is it really that useful?

ogam

2015-04-07 07:19:43 pm

if you have the option to use it, might as well even if you have to wait since it's still the same time. On areas where your party is force teleported, such as those shortcuts like a blocked passage or triggered events then you save a bit of time with the teleport.

Onin

2015-04-07 07:23:14 pm

It takes time to pick up, there's spiders guarding it. It has to actually save time to be worth bothering.

So yeah, this debug mode glitch is pretty great. It is a shame that it overloads your party the way it does, otherwise it might be used to, say, teleport across the map in some areas. I'll have to play around with just how OP this guy is, and where best to activate him, but this could potentially save a whole lot of time. Again.

Aqfaq

Edit history:

Aqfaq: 2015-04-07 09:45:53 pm

Aqfaq: 2015-04-07 09:44:30 pm

Aqfaq: 2015-04-07 09:43:33 pm

Aqfaq: 2015-04-07 08:33:26 pm

Aqfaq: 2015-04-07 08:20:14 pm

2015-04-07 07:43:38 pm

Haha, awesome stuff Jiseed. Great thinking outside the box there killing the main character. I wonder what happens if you kill Lady Webb to trigger the bad ending and then exit the room.

Edit:

I accidentally found a way to duplicate exp gain endlessly. I get max exp (66000) almost instantly. I just try to pick the lock near Lady Webb to gain the lock pick exp repeatedly for some reason. I do have the debug character with me, so I need to test whether it works without him.

http://i.imgur.com/08Xqh9u.jpg

Edit:

The exp trick works only when you have the debug character with you.

But here is another trick: You can dupe a potion that is in Lady Webb's night table (major potion of restoration). Just click spam the "take all" button to get as many potions as you need. Good potion to use in battle, but also sells for good money. No debug character needed for this, although my savegame may be corrupted, so this should be tested from a fresh start.

Edit:

~~By doing the kill trick to the cipher, you can duplicate him. Apparently all other characters get duplicated too. I have currently 2 debug ciphers, 2 Heodans and 2 Caliscas in my party.~~ Nope. Only character portraits were duplicated. The clones could not move. When saving and loading the duplicates disappear.

Haha, awesome stuff Jiseed. Great thinking outside the box there killing the main character. I wonder what happens if you kill Lady Webb to trigger the bad ending and then exit the room.

Edit:

I accidentally found a way to duplicate exp gain endlessly. I get max exp (66000) almost instantly. I just try to pick the lock near Lady Webb to gain the lock pick exp repeatedly for some reason. I do have the debug character with me, so I need to test whether it works without him.

http://i.imgur.com/08Xqh9u.jpg

Edit:

The exp trick works only when you have the debug character with you.

But here is another trick: You can dupe a potion that is in Lady Webb's night table (major potion of restoration). Just click spam the "take all" button to get as many potions as you need. Good potion to use in battle, but also sells for good money. No debug character needed for this, although my savegame may be corrupted, so this should be tested from a fresh start.

Edit:

[s]By doing the kill trick to the cipher, you can duplicate him. Apparently all other characters get duplicated too. I have currently 2 debug ciphers, 2 Heodans and 2 Caliscas in my party.[/s] Nope. Only character portraits were duplicated. The clones could not move. When saving and loading the duplicates disappear.

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2015-04-08 08:45:58 am

Onin: 2015-04-08 04:47:35 am

Onin: 2015-04-08 04:40:33 am

Onin: 2015-04-08 04:30:49 am

2015-04-08 04:27:09 am

So an easier way to set up for the glitch is to kill yourself while exiting the Gilded Vale inn. You'll have to save and reload to make Aloth movable again, but he'll pop back out of the ground after walking over a stairway, no problem. You'll have to continue for a bit to get some experience somewhere but that should also not be a problem. Doing it that way still allows the caravan slaughter strat, which is pretty significantly faster.

Edit: Oh, but the downside is that your followers copy the level of your main character. So if you get the glitch cypher immediately, Aloth and Eder will be much higher level too. That probably makes that not worth it. Makes me wonder if there's a class that can kill itself without help from followers?
Okay, a druid can just use Sun Beam on himself to kill himself while transitioning, I think. Would have to save a spell though. And take a long time getting hurt by the traps, without killing yourself... Not going to happen. Ah well.

I can't get the lockpick exp glitch to work, even with the debug character. How is it supposed to happen?

So an easier way to set up for the glitch is to kill yourself while exiting the Gilded Vale inn. You'll have to save and reload to make Aloth movable again, but he'll pop back out of the ground after walking over a stairway, no problem. You'll have to continue for a bit to get some experience somewhere but that should also not be a problem. Doing it that way still allows the caravan slaughter strat, which is pretty significantly faster.

Edit: Oh, but the downside is that your followers copy the level of your main character. So if you get the glitch cypher immediately, Aloth and Eder will be much higher level too. That probably makes that not worth it. Makes me wonder if there's a class that can kill itself without help from followers?
Okay, a druid can just use Sun Beam on himself to kill himself while transitioning, I think. Would have to save a spell though. And take a long time getting hurt by the traps, without killing yourself... Not going to happen. Ah well.

I can't get the lockpick exp glitch to work, even with the debug character. How is it supposed to happen?

Aqfaq

2015-04-08 10:06:37 am

Hahah, I have no idea what the exact conditions are for the exp trick. Do not get exp to the debug character before picking a lock?

Onin

2015-04-08 10:09:27 am

For one, the debug character can't pick that lock by himself, and when I buff his lockpicking so he can, he just unlocks it, gets experience once, nothing special. '-'

Aqfaq

2015-04-08 10:21:46 am

I tried some other lock in another house and it worked, so it does not need to be Lady Webb's lock. Maybe it needs to be a red lock, though?

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2015-04-08 11:54:19 am

Onin: 2015-04-08 11:53:40 am

2015-04-08 11:31:53 am

Sounds like there's something with your save that doesn't apply to my save for some reason :/

Edit: Found a different infinite experience glitch. I suicided out of the Valewood Cave, which made the random party members spawn at the bandit camp, and for some reason gave me infinite exploration experience there. Downside, someone spawns out of bounds and can't get back in.

Aqfaq

Edit history:

Aqfaq: 2015-04-08 01:32:42 pm

2015-04-08 01:27:15 pm

You just need to find a place to trigger the exp glitch without guys getting stuck. In some screens they do get stuck, others not.

Edit: Also, doing something that gives only little exp is a bad idea. With the lock at Lady Webb's place, which gives 210 exp, it takes maybe ten seconds to max out. So with a lousy 10 exp trap disarm for example, it would take about 3.5 minutes to get max exp.

Onin

2015-04-08 01:29:59 pm

So far I've found a myriad of other issues caused by the glitch. Enemies not dying when they reach 0 endurance. Combat failing to start so enemies constantly heal back to full. Dialogues breaking. So there's more to it than just getting stuck. But I'm gonna test out a whole bunch of areas along the route to see if anything interesting happens.

ogam

2015-04-08 01:36:11 pm

If you can do this at stormwall gorge and be teleported to the bottom right you can skip going to defiance by completely

Aqfaq

2015-04-08 02:36:58 pm

Good thinking, ogam. Skipping Maelward would hypothetically be possible in a similar manner, but as Onin has pointed out it might not be wise at that point. Oh, wait, if you can get max exp to a wizard character, then I guess you could get some very powerful spells, so Maelward would not be necessary?

One strange thing that happened to me was that an animal companion got OOB when I loaded a savegame where everyone was standing on a small pack. This seems to indicate that by simply saving and loading might do the teleport trick. What was especially interesting was that the animal companion seemed to zip with tremendous speed through the area. If this can be done to the main character, so that the character's position zips toward an exit, then clicking at the exit at the correct time might enable exiting the screen while zipping. Purely hypothetical at the moment, but it is worth testing: Just put all your characters in a tight group in some narrow space, save and load. Anything might happen. If some character is OOB, pay attention to whether he is actually zipping at light speed trying to find a space to stand on.

Good thinking, ogam. Skipping Maelward would hypothetically be possible in a similar manner, but as Onin has pointed out it might not be wise at that point. Oh, wait, if you can get max exp to a wizard character, then I guess you could get some very powerful spells, so Maelward would not be necessary?

One strange thing that happened to me was that an animal companion got OOB when I loaded a savegame where everyone was standing on a small pack. This seems to indicate that by simply saving and loading might do the teleport trick. What was especially interesting was that the animal companion seemed to zip with tremendous speed through the area. If this can be done to the main character, so that the character's position zips toward an exit, then clicking at the exit at the correct time might enable exiting the screen while zipping. Purely hypothetical at the moment, but it is worth testing: Just put all your characters in a tight group in some narrow space, save and load. Anything might happen. If some character is OOB, pay attention to whether he is actually zipping at light speed trying to find a space to stand on.

Onin

2015-04-08 02:37:24 pm

Well, I can't find a better application for the glitch than just starting at level 7, and getting all your companions to level 7 automatically. Which just leaves the question of what to do with the 50k gold. It could be used to buy top tier weapons in Twin Elms, or it could be spent on whatever companions you want in Gilded Vale. Or a mixture of the two.

Duping shouldn't be necessary with the debug stun spell, though large groups of enemies can still be a bit dangerous. Does require a fair amount of micro, so it's probably best to get more passive hirelings. Maybe ciphers, just spamming the same low level spells everywhere.

Aqfaq

2015-04-08 02:43:25 pm

When I kill the debug guy the second time in a row, I get a black screen. Have you found a way to continue after this black screen? I can access the menus, but I can't see where I click, so I don't know what to do.

Onin

2015-04-08 02:44:42 pm

I've had a lot of situations result in a black screen, without being able to do anything. It's probably just a softlock.

Aqfaq

Edit history:

Aqfaq: 2015-04-08 04:06:52 pm

Aqfaq: 2015-04-08 03:32:30 pm

2015-04-08 03:30:40 pm

I was able to get beyond the water boyndary in Stormwall Gorge. I kill the main character and then enter the screen. The main character is locked in a cliff in the middle of the area. I save and load to unlock the rest of the party. Then I use Hiravias' ice spell twice to push the main character out of the locked space. Now the main character is Jesus and can walk on the water. However, it looks like the exit trigger does not exist, so I can't exit the screen to the east. Maybe I am missing something, so you should test it also.

The position of the party members after killglitch seem to depend on the screen from which the party is coming into the current screen. If I enter from north the party members get spawned on top part of the screen, but if I suicide in a location that is west from Stormwall Gorge, the party members spawn in the south side of the screen getting permanently stuck.

Edit: Stormwall Gorge water blockage seems to be a narrow one, so it looks like you could also deathport over it.

Edit: Funnily, you can reach some of the villagers in Gilded Vale with the spirit lance spell. Then they can kill you during the cutscene. When the cutscene ends you have 0 health and can't move. Save and load to get full health and unstuck the character. Useless, but funny.

I was able to get beyond the water boyndary in Stormwall Gorge. I kill the main character and then enter the screen. The main character is locked in a cliff in the middle of the area. I save and load to unlock the rest of the party. Then I use Hiravias' ice spell twice to push the main character out of the locked space. Now the main character is Jesus and can walk on the water. However, it looks like the exit trigger does not exist, so I can't exit the screen to the east. Maybe I am missing something, so you should test it also.

The position of the party members after killglitch seem to depend on the screen from which the party is coming into the current screen. If I enter from north the party members get spawned on top part of the screen, but if I suicide in a location that is west from Stormwall Gorge, the party members spawn in the south side of the screen getting permanently stuck.

Edit: Stormwall Gorge water blockage seems to be a narrow one, so it looks like you could also deathport over it.

Edit: Funnily, you can reach some of the villagers in Gilded Vale with the spirit lance spell. Then they can kill you during the cutscene. When the cutscene ends you have 0 health and can't move. Save and load to get full health and unstuck the character. Useless, but funny.

ogam

2015-04-08 04:51:46 pm

I noticed battle mode ends for a brief second when you completely charm the enemies, you can use this to transition maps or use scripted events. such as burial isle to use the passage way and down the pit. I know ciphers get a mass charm late game.

Jiseed

2015-04-09 02:17:47 pm

Small thing to add: If you enter the inventory after a character has attacked it resets the swing timer for the character you have currently selected. 2h weapons are probably the way to go for combat considering this. It doesnt affect reloading though, so guns dont benefit.

Onin

2015-04-09 05:26:00 pm

There aren't that many good 2handers in the endgame. If I'm gonna spend time buying weapons, I'd rather get the really good ones; being the guns in twin elms. Plus, constantly micromanaging swing timer resets for a not all that major increase in DPS (considering accuracy, versus just using spells) is probably not worth it?

Aqfaq

2015-04-09 06:14:02 pm

Nice find, Jiseed.

How about having 6 druids in animal form. Then just learn to spam this pattern in optimal tempo:

I, ESC, 2
I, ESC, 3
I, ESC, 4
I, ESC, 5
I, ESC, 6
I, ESC, 1
repeat

You only need to open the inventory for a split second, so I would imagine the damage output being quite considerable. It requires some practice to do effectively, though. Hey, what about those spells that produce magical weapons in the wielder's hand? Those should be quite effective.

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2015-04-09 06:47:46 pm

2015-04-09 06:46:28 pm

Recruiting people is not really an option. You have to stat them up manually, then level them up repeatedly, which costs a stupid amount of time.

Basically, the route I've come to is this:

Do the normal caravan quests, so you have two followers following you into the ruins. Run straight through the traps to lose some health, then suicide for debug.
Do everything up to Caed Nua as before, except skip Durance. The followers are all automatically level 7, pre-statted. Aloth's spell selection isn't great, but it's not useless. Caed Nua is really easy with Debug Stun and lvl 7 damage output.
Get the ranger girl, skip Defiance Bay entirely, get the druid guy. Get to Twin Elms, buy the unique guns and give them to the ranger and the chanter guy. Also buy camping gear.
Do the Hylia quest. Spam spells in every fight. Go to Burial Isle. Spam spells in every fight. Go into the pit. Spam spells in every fight. Camp whenever you're low.
Proceed to Thaos, spamming spells in every fight, skipping the last one, then spam spells at Thaos to one-cycle him, and clean up his guardians.

You start with 3 camping gear from spawn. You can pick up the 2 en route to Gilded Vale. You can buy at least 2 more in Twin Elms. And spells do SO much more damage than anything else at that stage of the game. Especially Stag Horns (or whatever it's called) deals massive damage. Debug stun trivializes most fights, only the last fight in Burial Isle is a challenge cause those ghosts just won't die and it's hard to keep all of them stunned permanently.

I don't even level up to 8. Why would I waste time doing that, when I already have enough spells to do a steady amount of damage, good weapons on the people without spells, and at the end of the day the difference between 7 and 8 in terms of accuracy versus deflection isn't very helpful at all?

More micromanagement has to be better than the ability to throw overpowered Druid spells at every pack. I don't think there is much better than that.

Recruiting people is not really an option. You have to stat them up manually, then level them up repeatedly, which costs a stupid amount of time.

Basically, the route I've come to is this:

Do the normal caravan quests, so you have two followers following you into the ruins. Run straight through the traps to lose some health, then suicide for debug.
Do everything up to Caed Nua as before, except skip Durance. The followers are all automatically level 7, pre-statted. Aloth's spell selection isn't great, but it's not useless. Caed Nua is really easy with Debug Stun and lvl 7 damage output.
Get the ranger girl, skip Defiance Bay entirely, get the druid guy. Get to Twin Elms, buy the unique guns and give them to the ranger and the chanter guy. Also buy camping gear.
Do the Hylia quest. Spam spells in every fight. Go to Burial Isle. Spam spells in every fight. Go into the pit. Spam spells in every fight. Camp whenever you're low.
Proceed to Thaos, spamming spells in every fight, skipping the last one, then spam spells at Thaos to one-cycle him, and clean up his guardians.

You start with 3 camping gear from spawn. You can pick up the 2 en route to Gilded Vale. You can buy at least 2 more in Twin Elms. And spells do SO much more damage than anything else at that stage of the game. Especially Stag Horns (or whatever it's called) deals massive damage. Debug stun trivializes most fights, only the last fight in Burial Isle is a challenge cause those ghosts just won't die and it's hard to keep all of them stunned permanently.

I don't even level up to 8. Why would I waste time doing that, when I already have enough spells to do a steady amount of damage, good weapons on the people without spells, and at the end of the day the difference between 7 and 8 in terms of accuracy versus deflection isn't very helpful at all?

More micromanagement has to be better than the ability to throw overpowered Druid spells at every pack. I don't think there is much better than that.

Aqfaq

Edit history:

Aqfaq: 2015-04-09 08:30:57 pm

Aqfaq: 2015-04-09 07:44:32 pm

Aqfaq: 2015-04-09 07:30:45 pm

2015-04-09 07:30:00 pm

Quote from Onin:

Do the normal caravan quests

You don't need to. With Jiseed's trick you can defeat the caravan without any spells, just use the animal form. Just lose some health in the battle and also in the spider battles in the cave. Then you have two sunbeam spells to cause suicide and trigger debug character. You may need to uncheck "maim party members before death". To speed it up, the best thing would be to create a character with low health but high endurance, if possible.

Edit:

Quote from Onin:

Killing the entire caravan at the start is much faster than doing the questline. But only if you're a Druid

Due to Jiseed's trick this does not apply anymore. I believe any character can be used to defeat the caravan faster than doing the normal quest. Anyway, druid still seems to be the best choice, unless some other character has better suicide abilities than sunbeam.

Edit:

By the way, it may now be faster to use game version 1.04, which apparently has faster loading times. The changelog says: "Optimized Save/Load game system for better performance."

[quote="Onin"]Do the normal caravan quests[/quote]
You don't need to. With Jiseed's trick you can defeat the caravan without any spells, just use the animal form. Just lose some health in the battle and also in the spider battles in the cave. Then you have two sunbeam spells to cause suicide and trigger debug character. You may need to uncheck "maim party members before death". To speed it up, the best thing would be to create a character with low health but high endurance, if possible.

Edit:

[quote="Onin"]Killing the entire caravan at the start is much faster than doing the questline. But only if you're a Druid[/quote]
Due to Jiseed's trick this does not apply anymore. I believe any character can be used to defeat the caravan faster than doing the normal quest. Anyway, druid still seems to be the best choice, unless some other character has better suicide abilities than sunbeam.

Edit:

By the way, it may now be faster to use game version 1.04, which apparently has faster loading times. The changelog says: "Optimized Save/Load game system for better performance."

Onin

Edit history:

Onin: 2015-04-10 06:28:21 am

Onin: 2015-04-10 02:47:56 am

2015-04-10 02:43:20 am

Doing the questline is only about a minute slower. I somehow doubt that setting yourself up for suiciding off just baiting disengagement attacks is faster than that, but I'll look into it I guess. The problem with being alone is that running out of endurance causes a game-over, even if you have plenty health left, unlike with companions where you just stand up again.

I've played around with trying to aggro Thaos alone, but the cutscene will still play out, I can't seem to stun him fast enough to prevent the guardians from being summoned.

Aqfaq

Edit history:

Aqfaq: 2015-04-10 10:45:32 am

Aqfaq: 2015-04-10 10:32:27 am

2015-04-10 10:31:14 am

The caravan slaughter strategy is definitely faster, and I would say even easier, because it requires less work, just minor luck. I tested this and you can choose wizard character with as low constitution as possible. The minimum health the character can have is 72, endurance being 24. If necessary, use the endurance regeneration potion when the battle begins to be able to lose more health than 23. I just tested and finished the first battle on first attempt just using the axe and spamming Jiseed's trick. I finished with 7 health left. So now I can use one Jolting Touch or Kaloth's Sunless Grasp to suicide. Only one spell is needed for suicide, so I might have used Death Blades in the caravan fight to maybe speed it up a little. No need to waste time in spider fights at all. In the cave just clear the traps or fight the monster, whichever route seems faster.

Anyway, first battle goes like this, very fast: Remove female's armor and weapons. Take regeneration potion. Equip axe. Attack caravan. Use regeneration potion. Spam "I" and "ESC" while attacking. Most of the enemies die in one hit. The caravan should now be dead and you should have low health when entering the cave.

Oh, but druid with low constitution might still be a better choice, but wizard and druid should be pretty much equal. If two spells are required to suicide with druid, maybe do the first sunbeam immediately when entering the cave, so that you can restart, if the damage was low. The savegames work fast early in the game due to small cave size, so doing a quicksave and trying RNG manipulation once or twice before restarting might be fine. With wizard this is not necessary at all, because the first fight should be easily enough to get low health. I'm not sure, but deleting all existing savegames may also speed up the save/load process. You can just move the files to a different directory, if you need them. I can't recall whether you can turn autosave off from the options, but that should be also done if possible.

Yeah, I also tried some stuff with Thaos, but found nothing useful. You can pause before his last conversation, but I can't think of anything interesting to do at that point.

I am quite slow with my mouse and hotkeys, so it is very nice to see someone good doing this. Very interesting to see how you manage in the next run. I am almost hoping that some enemies cause a little trouble, because it is quite entertaining to see how you can handle the surprising situations. Anything funny can happen, like the last time when the wisp attacked a boar off-screen. Good luck!

Edit: Nah, forget the wizard, I can't seem to do the suicide trick with his spells afterall. Druid with low health seems to be the best choice.

The caravan slaughter strategy is definitely faster, and I would say even easier, because it requires less work, just minor luck. I tested this and you can choose wizard character with as low constitution as possible. The minimum health the character can have is 72, endurance being 24. If necessary, use the endurance regeneration potion when the battle begins to be able to lose more health than 23. I just tested and finished the first battle on first attempt just using the axe and spamming Jiseed's trick. I finished with 7 health left. So now I can use one Jolting Touch or Kaloth's Sunless Grasp to suicide. Only one spell is needed for suicide, so I might have used Death Blades in the caravan fight to maybe speed it up a little. No need to waste time in spider fights at all. In the cave just clear the traps or fight the monster, whichever route seems faster.

Anyway, first battle goes like this, very fast: Remove female's armor and weapons. Take regeneration potion. Equip axe. Attack caravan. Use regeneration potion. Spam "I" and "ESC" while attacking. Most of the enemies die in one hit. The caravan should now be dead and you should have low health when entering the cave.

Oh, but druid with low constitution might still be a better choice, but wizard and druid should be pretty much equal. If two spells are required to suicide with druid, maybe do the first sunbeam immediately when entering the cave, so that you can restart, if the damage was low. The savegames work fast early in the game due to small cave size, so doing a quicksave and trying RNG manipulation once or twice before restarting might be fine. With wizard this is not necessary at all, because the first fight should be easily enough to get low health. I'm not sure, but deleting all existing savegames may also speed up the save/load process. You can just move the files to a different directory, if you need them. I can't recall whether you can turn autosave off from the options, but that should be also done if possible.

Yeah, I also tried some stuff with Thaos, but found nothing useful. You can pause before his last conversation, but I can't think of anything interesting to do at that point.

I am quite slow with my mouse and hotkeys, so it is very nice to see someone good doing this. Very interesting to see how you manage in the next run. I am almost hoping that some enemies cause a little trouble, because it is quite entertaining to see how you can handle the surprising situations. Anything funny can happen, like the last time when the wisp attacked a boar off-screen. Good luck!

Edit: Nah, forget the wizard, I can't seem to do the suicide trick with his spells afterall. Druid with low health seems to be the best choice.