Pillars of Eternity: Basics Guide (Combat & Attributes)

hello and welcome my name is Hoss and this is a look at pillars of eternity the newest CRPG by obsidian in case you're still not sure whether you'd like this game or not I'd highly recommend you check out the review I did when the game came out now then that is a fraternity much like the Infinity engine games it's so heavily based on might not be the easiest of games to get into once you get into it though it turns into a fun challenging combat system that rewards you for good technical choices so with this video I'll outline all or at least most of the mechanics that you need to know show you a good section of the combat and go over all the details such as which attributes to pick for which class or how to use abilities first of all in pillars of eternity you will of course control a party this party can have up to six people in it that's your main character which you create at the beginning of your game and up to five other companions these companions can be found in game as written companions of which there are eight or you can create them yourself by hiring mercenaries each of these will have their own class in pillars of eternity there are 11 different classes which all have their own set of abilities and roles damage dealers can come in the form of melee damage dealers such as say the Barbarian ranged damage dealers such as a ranger or casters such as a wizard a ranger rogue or Seifer would be best at dealing with single targets whereas a wizard - drew it or barbarian would be better at dealing with groups you then have your tanks such as fighters and peloton's and your support classes such as the priest or chanter in general I would highly recommend you take at least a priest with you in your party as they're in combat Healing is simply invaluable for the more if you're playing a damage dealer that isn't very sturdy I would always recommend that you make them ranged instead of melee a range cipher or a range stroke is a much safer bet than a melee cipher or melee broke though of course those can work just fine either way you then have to select your attributes and unlike many other RPGs you won't gain attributes every level the attribute build you pick here is incredibly important as the only way you can increase them later on is through armor or consumable items with temporary effects so let's go over the attributes first of all there's mites my directly increases all your sources of damage and healing incredibly important if you are playing as a damage dealer the healing it increases is only for outgoing healing and incoming healing so for a tank this is not a good attribute whereas for a priest this is going to increase your healing output by a lot it also increases your fortitude defense which is one of the multiple defensive statistics in the game but if you are playing a tank then this is simply not a good attribute to get Constitution Constitution directly increases the amount of health and endurance that your character will have endurance is the short-term survivability of a character and health is the long-term survivability of a character every time damage is done to your character it is first reduced by your damage reduction and then it is dealt to both your endurance and your health at the same time when your endurance runs out during a fight your character is knocked down and will get back up and regenerate all of his lost endurance providing you've actually won the fight when your health funds out your character is initially maimed and if he takes any damage will maimed you will permanently die depending on your settings you can also turn off the maimed part meaning he'll immediately die if you are so inclined for the more you can't regenerate more endurance than your total health so if your health is very low your endurance won't completely regenerate either now with that being said Constitution is only really an important statistic if you are playing a class with a higher health base and game per level because it is percentage based you can easily lower this as much as you can if you are playing a low health character such as a wizard or a cipher wizards only start with 30 endurance and gain 10 every level removing 21 percent off of this isn't going to matter all that much as you will rely on your other defenses much more than your actual endurance so for low health characters I would recommend lowering Constitution and using those points elsewhere you will later on also have consumable items that will help your low health characters a lot more than any points in Constitution will then we have dexterity dexterity is mainly a damage dealer attribute and directly increases the speed of everything you do called action speed this also includes the reloading speed of a firearm and I'll probably show that once we get into combat but if you are playing a tank this is not an important statistic because heavy armor is going to completely destroy your action speed as it is so dexterity simply isn't going to help that much in that case then on the flip side we have perception perception is mainly a tanking attribute because they'll give you deflection and reflex two forms of Defense's it so increases the chance that you might interrupt an enemy caster when you hit them which could be a valid reason to increase the save you have a ranged character with high Dex and therefore a very fast attacking character and then you might want to interrupt enemies a lot and you might want to invest into this but in general if you aren't playing a tank then you don't need perception keep in mind though perception does come up quite a lot in dialog so you might actually want to put 14 or so points into this anyway simply to pass those dialog checks intelligence intelligence is incredibly important for casters and quite important for barbarians due to the area of effect range increase which results in more damage done to groups for the more it increases the duration of any condition or buff you place on allies and enemies another reason why it's so good for casters and it increases your will defense which is less of a factor but still useful it's important for damage dealers that rely on area-of-effect abilities such as a wizard or a druid or you might want to increase this just to have longer conditions on enemies which might make this a valid reason to increase it for say a rogue but in general you don't want to invest into it heavily unless you are a caster which does include priests just to be clear finally resolve resolve is much like perception almost entirely just for tanking it again alike perception comes up quite a lot in dialogue though so you might want to put this bets around 14 just for those dialogue checks but otherwise only increase this if you are playing as a tank then another very important statistic here is accuracy accuracy is what is rolled against the appropriate defenses which is to say deflection fortitude reflex or will and it's used for all attacks including spells in case of a wizard priest or druid spell your accuracy is not based on your weapon but rather your base accuracy plus the accuracy that the spell indicates plus your actual level take for instance a simple but glorious fireball my wizard is level 11 his base accuracy therefore at level 11 is 50 the spell says it will add another 10 for a total of 60 plus I'll get another 11 because I am level 11 for a 71 accuracy total then before we get into some actual combat let's quickly take a look at the various skills you level up these skills whenever you level up your character self is a pretty straightforward ability it does what it says you increase your stealth capabilities it reduces the chance that you'll be seen while scouting athletics reduces your combat fatigue and increases your maximum fatigue essentially every fight and every time you walk around your characters will get gradually more tired until they are fatigued which give you a nasty debuff and gets worse the more tired they get I would highly recommend putting at least two possibly even three points into athletics for every single character because this takes away an incredibly huge part of the total combat fatigue that you can get then lore war allows you to use Scrolls scrolls are consumable items one-time use that cast a spell the vast majority of them being priests druid or wizard spells the mechanics mechanics is a very important skill to have at least on one character without one mechanics character things will get far tougher mechanics allows you to first of all open lock doors and boxes and secondly it allows to detect items and traps reception doesn't increase this this is all based on mechanics so it's important not just for discovering and dismantling a trap but also for finding any other hidden items and finally survival increases the duration of consumable items that is to say potions and food furthermore all of these skills can also come up in dialog from time to time now then let's take a look at the combat so here we are in beautiful elm shore as you can see I haven't discovered anything up here yet so we'll go have a look and fight some beasties over there first of all though my party is pretty banged up as you can see in fact her endurance can't even regenerate all the way up anymore same with my paladin and they also have the minor fatigue debuff so the first thing I want to do before we get into anything is actually rest now on the Hard difficulty you can only have a maximum of two supplies on normal this becomes for supplies and on easy this becomes six supplies so you do have to take that into consideration otherwise you have to go back and restock on your supplies priests wizards and druids also run out of spells and you do have to rest to get them back except my first and second level spells as you can see this is because I'm a level 11 at level 9 your first level spells become prayer encounter at level 11 your second level spells become prayer encounter this basically means that you can use them as much as you want I would have combat because I'm not in an encounter but once you go into an encounter they will diminish they will run out and then once combat ends it will replenish otherwise all your other spells and until your level 9 you have to rest to get them back so first thing we're going to here is take a little nap and as you can see I know about all my spells back my guys aren't beaten up anymore and they don't have the fatigue buff so the next thing we're gonna do is check our formations you can create custom formations in pillars of eternity which is very nice because the initial encounter in your initial positioning tends to be one of the most crucial things in a fight and I'll leave without this so now I can move around and whenever I go into combat even if I haven't seen the enemies I should be in a pretty good position so here we have some enemies that I haven't seen me yet because I'm stealth even though I didn't invest into stealth at all with this party but the reason I did go into stealth is in case I had any traps lying around or any hidden items I could have spot that with my mechanics skill now in dungeons you do want to make sure you are stealth whenever you go in in forests that generally isn't much of concern I want to be casting a slickin on these ogre druids but before I do so I should probably check and see if I have any intel on these ogres so you can open the bestiary and in here you can see the damage reduction and other such values of every enemy you've defeat and every time you defeat them you get a bestiary entry you don't get experience for killing them but you do get experience for completing the bestiary entries so here we have the ogre I can see that demonstration is 10 normally but it's high against freeze and low against corrode so we want to use corrode preferably so say I want a gas slick in a very good level one wizard spell if I hover over my allies you can see I am going to hit them the circle turns into this sort of pointing arrows clover esque symbol that means it will hit them if they're in the yellow area I won't hit them the yellow area is all because I have such a high intelligence on my character so the area of effect increase won't hit allies it will of course hit enemies and preferably you want to make it so that your allies are in the yellow area and won't get hit while your enemies are still in the spell so if you optimize as well you can even throw like fireballs towards enemies or as you can see this lightning will actually hit my LS there's no yellow area with it but you can lob like fireballs and what-have-you at enemies and not hit your allies as you can see I also can't cast any buffs pre combat you have to be in calm before you can do so I do want to cast the slickin on these ogre druids so let's move forward a bit let's attack with everyone on this drew its focus fire damage is very important gases slick on them so they'll go prone it's an incredibly good spell I'll cast a buff on my allies here this increases their defenses and I want to make sure this guy is actually using the right weapon and I'll run forward make sure not to run into the slick and bit as you can see they're all falling prone it looks quite hilarious but it's very very deadly and as you can see I got one grace three hits and two crits so the way this works with the grace I got a 50 a 50 is just barely a graze a 51 would have been a normal hit anything between 16 and 50 is a grace anything between 51 and 100 is a hit above hundred is a critical and below 16 is a Miss so a grace is going to do only 50% of the duration whereas a crit would be hundred and fifty percent of the duration as you can see I also got a crit here this is a normal hit this 2.9 that's a normal duration and then I got a crit right underneath it which is 4.4 seconds and that's because I rolled over a hundred so it is your accuracy against there reflex in this case that's specific for the slick and spell I got 77 accuracy by the way because of the the peloton buff my chanter here as you can see this how chanters work you open the prepared Chan's book he is currently casting I believe it is the burning the fiery shield there we go that's fine that's going to give me some defenses and he's going to give fire damage no mine yet so I'm fine with that this is basically also an aura then I can do mark spray which is a per encounter ability which means I get it back after this fight and I'll cast it on this druid which one let's just do this one here the wolf can hit that perfectly so that's going to increase the damage of her and the wolf at the same time so I want to move my fighter forward and my paladin is well the way the aggro system works is very simple they basically most of the time attack whichever is closest I actually got a switch my peloton's weapons here back to a shield and a weapon and then I'll move forwards with her so that those ogres will go on her let's see what spell I can cast here so I could cast frost gear but they have 20 damage reduction against that so that is not a good plan instead I will cast this noxious this malignant cloud which is going to do corrode damage which is wonderful against their only 5 damage reduction make sure she doesn't get hit by it there you go that's fine she can go in there now as well so they will clump around my fighter my wolf and my paladin she has a couple of abilities as well so I'll just cast flames of the devotion which is a starter pelvin damage ability on this ogre here now for some reason my Rangers forward apparently I forgot to switch her weapons I think that's because earlier she got mind control to mate to switch weapons so this is a good moment to talk about the engagement system as you can see here you can see a red and a blue line which means they are engaged in combat if one of them tries to move away they will get hit by a free engagement attack if you can see my cursor is red now so if I move them over here he will get hit by a free engagement attack that's not nice they also don't want to move away from engagement so I could also make this engagement line green I have the colorblind mode on right now which just changes the colors as you can see a green line the wolf is engaged with the druid but the druid not with me the pennilyn is engaged with the ogre here as well so they don't want to move away from my paladin and my wolf the AI will try and avoid that because free damage is not something they want to have happen so you want your fighter to have multiple more engagement abilities there's a talent that increases your engagement as well I'm gonna move the wool over here so if he attacks now as soon as the attack actually goes off you can see he's flanked in the top corner over here flanks reduces their deflection by 10 which is very great which means you will be doing more damage deflection directly effects normal hits basically furthermore here we can cast a few more spells well because this dome of protection this increases my defenses all of my characters as you can see plus 50 into all defenses so to reflex will fortitude and deflection and then I think that's fine over there I could I could cast a confusion on that group actually confusion is a very nice condition that basically turns them into my team for a few seconds it's sort of like a weakened mind control and they might start hitting each other in that case I want to nuke this guy down with my ranged characters and actually my paladin could buff up let's see let's buff up my ranger so she can attack quicker and do more damage this is going to increase the attack speed by 20% as you can see and it is a per rest ability so I actually have to rest before you lose again they are now confused which means they won't be attacking me and they might start attacking each other or get hit by each other which is very nice this doesn't last too long so I have to make sure that this ogre won't start hitting my ranger and stuff so I want to move my Culloden to the bottom here and probably just attack this ogre you can also you can always attack anything you want even if they're allied so I'm gonna go and nuke down this druid before he gets unconfused because I do want to make sure he is gone they are the biggest rats might as well do a pillar of flame on them and another thing you might notice under these entrance these green entrance circles you can see these you can all see them enemies you can see these yellow bars those are the action speed that I was mentioning earlier with the clarity every time you hit with an attack or F cast the spell there is a small cooldown period basically that's the yellow bar ticking down so before they can do another hit that first ticks down with increased dexterity that bar doesn't take as long and if you have a firearm you have another period where they have to reload after that bar ticks down which is basically a second bar now these two are quite clumped up so I could do an arcane assault arcane assault is very nice it's your per encounter ability as a wizard you get it at the beginning and as you can see it doesn't hit allies so even if my fighter is right in the middle or in this case the the wolf it is still not going to hit them but I might as well just do a fireball at this point I think because I can hit all of them yep there we go because of the area of effect increase I can in all of them perfectly that is absolutely amazing these are still in combat over here even though the ogre isn't fighting back and my chanter has built up three phrases every time they're done singing one of their little songs they get a phrase and you can use them to do invocations in this case I'm just gonna cast this tier 1 invocation because the other tiers are going to cost too many phrases and the battle will be over before then I fear Plus these skeletons can go and flank these ogres which is always quite nice and as you can see they all blew up in a glorious fireball the ogre finally decided to fight back and they are pretty much going to get destroyed at this point I am before as level 11 and level 11 well it's one level away from the level cap so it's not too surprising that I mop these up pretty easily well there you go that's a good look at combat thank you for watching my name is Ben ass I am going to do the most fun part about RPGs and get my loot and then discover what kind of weakling augurs will be in this cave and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: HaasGaming

Views: 280,900

Keywords: Pillars Of Eternity (Video Game), Basics Guide, Guide, Pillars, Eternity, Obsidian, Paradox, cRPG, RPG, Role-playing Video Game (Media Genre), Roleplay, Isometric, Kickstarter, Real time, With pause, Lets Play, Commentary, Role-playing Game (Game Genre), Video Game (Industry), Let's, Help, Tips, Tutorial, Character, Combat, Attributes, Skills, Wizard, Fighter, Chanter, Paladin, Ranger, Cipher, Steam, HD, 60 fps, Basic, Manual

Id: VZEbrJlPcn0

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2015