Pathfinder: Kingmaker

Ah... so with a light weapon and WF, I get dex bonus for hitting, but am still using str for damage? That's not good.

Also, if I use a longsword, say, with slashing grace, then I am using dex for dmg but str for to-hit (since these weapons don't meet the WF prerequisites)?

It looks then like the only route to having dex count for to-hit and dmg is to go with rapiers and take both weapon finesse and fencing grace?

That seems to make dex melee builds a bit limited. But maybe they're supposed to be?
 
So I got nok nok and I'm pleased with his damage but he keeps dying so quickly in melee fights, are there any must have feats/spells he needs to prevent this? I find sticking greater invisibility on him helps a lot.

It's actually a problem with all my melee, incl amiri and harrim...
 
Silent to keep in mind is that 2 on 1 gives a flanking bonus (easier to hit).
Generally, the first attacker in draws the aggro so make that your tank (Valerie).
You can change formation options so put your ranged support at the back, your squishies in the middle, your tank right up front and other fighters on the wing.
If you don't have turn based mode on, your casters will use low damage spells like acid splash which is a little pointless.
Your wizard should be controlling the battle with buffs and debuffs as should your Bard (Linzi) with her performance abilities.
Make sure Amiri is raging.

There are quite a few different tactics to try depending on your party selection and your role in it.
 
The issue I have is that since the abilities are once per rest, and since there is an overall game time limit, I generally limp along through encounter after encounter saving them for a big tough battle (that quite often never comes), my HP slowly getting chipped away until I have no alternative but to rest.

It's kind of working in that I am comfortably ahead of the timer, but I am not really using my party's abilities to their full potential.
 
strumpusplunket said:
The issue I have is that since the abilities are once per rest, and since there is an overall game time limit, I generally limp along through encounter after encounter saving them for a big tough battle (that quite often never comes), my HP slowly getting chipped away until I have no alternative but to rest.

It's kind of working in that I am comfortably ahead of the timer, but I am not really using my party's abilities to their full potential.
Click to expand...
I seem to remember reading somewhere that the time limit is only for the first act. That being uniting the land
 
There are some more events in the quest list later on, which have a time limit. These will be clearly marked with the remaining days before the event takes place, so you can do other things while you wait. As an indication of what may happen timewise for you, I completed every side quest there was in the game, visited every location on the map, and I still had plenty of time to kill sitting in base doing nothing but card events to pass the time. What will help is if you prioritize getting enough kingdom stats in Arcane so you can unlock the Arcane advisor slot, and then be able to build teleport circles in your towns. And make sure to select locations for towns in each area to be spread out as far as possible, in order to maximize the travel time saved by teleporting to that location. In other words the towns are best placed on the extreme borders of the territories. I also was a bit paranoid about not resting too much as I also heard about the time limits in some quests, but in the end there was plenty of time.

Edit: Also, to avoid resting, I stocked up on healing potions whenever I could and managed hp that way as much as I could. Also, having your clerics have a lot of restoration spells memorised all the time will stand you in good stead, or again stock up on restoration potions, as restoration to recover stat loss is a major thing in this game.
 
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That's reassuring.

In the end in chapter one, despite me starting out worried about the time, there was really plenty of it.

I've ended up having visited everywhere I can go (leaving two areas that kicked my butt for later...), done a fair bit uneconomical tracking back and forth to the trading post to sell stuff, gone around in circles a bit filling in the map fog, and I still have 54 days left until the main first act quest expires.

If the time limits for the rest of the game are equally as generous then that will be fine.
 
My tip, is each chapter has a set amount of kingdom days effectively. I would advise you to prioritise or at least keep chipping away at the main quest for that chapter (at least for first few chapters). Otherwise you will keep getting problem cards that can be overwhelming. Plenty of people fail 20-30 hours into the game as they let main story tick away building up problem cards that can lead to a run away effect as you do not have enough advisors. Once you finish the main quest for the relevant chapter then can explore the world, do all the side quests, build up kingdom and upgrading advisors etc.
 
Yes, that is a good summation. What I did when it got to the stage where you have a kingdom to manage and you start getting event cards, is I attempted to marry up the time each event card said it would take to complete, with how much exploration on the map I estimate I could do, in a kind of loop, so could explore and wind up back at the capital just before the event cards finished so I could deal with them then, then go back exploring while the next set of cards were going. And I stacked up multiple cards while doing this to maximize advisor usage. What you want to avoid doing is sitting in base using the time skip button just to advance time to compete cards, you should be using that time to explore. This will become clearer when you get the kingdom. The main thing is to always do any event card classed as a problem such that it will be be done before the expiry date, i.e. prioritize these. Cards marked as opportunities are secondary in importance.

Edit: this card stacking only applies to those events which don't force you to skip time. Some cards like advisor training or territory claiming, force you to skip a set number of days once you set them off, so you are effectively bound to the base while these compete and can't explore.. So when you are ready for those types of cards you can stack up the other problem/opportunity cards so they are done at the same time. Also, I always tried to make it so the fixed time cards finished within the current month, so the month didn't tick over. New cards appear on the first of the month so being able to manage them as close to the beginning of the month the better if you want to optimise the time.
 
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As above.

The first chapter gives you about 85 days to complete, my first pay through I did it in 10 days as I didn't realise. I take my time now to explore the map as much as I can as I know I have tons of time. It also means I gather more XP to make my life a little easier.
 
Okay, so I just started chapter two and even with the above advice I am a bit overwhelmed and have no idea what needs doing or how the different time slots (for events and real time) intersect, what to prioritise, what to build, where to build...

I had to take a break as my head was spinning. I will come back to this after trying to read up on what's what I think.
 
The various town buildings basically increase the relevant kingdom stats seen in the left side bar on the town build screen. How high those stats are determines when you can level up your advisors, whether you can unlock new advisors. With the locked advisor slots, like the Arcane advisor, locked behind levelling up Divine, and so on for the other locked advisors. Espionage is defo the hardest to unlock, leave this till way way into the game. I believe you have to level Divine up to 60 before you can unlock the Arcane slot, which you need to then build teleporters, plus you do also actually need to do the Advisor upgrade card to actually level the Divine advisor up enough times before the Arcane actually unlocks. This advisor upgrade is just another event card which is one of those which takes a fixed skip time. I had to trawl guides for all this myself, it defo is the hardest bit of the game to understand. The good news is, once you have unlocked all the advisors, then optimal town building is not that important, if it ever actually is for that matter, and you can just bang buildings down without having to worry about optimising stats. That is unless you start losing stats because of failed problem events, which is why you prioritise those. There are guides for optimal building types to get neighbouring bonuses, but as I say, after a while you need really need to bother with that side of it.
 
Oh geez, I hadn't even looked at those stats yet!

Thanks for the detailed reply. I will have another look, probably relaoding my hard save from the start of the chapter before I had blundered through most of the initial choices.


Oh, incidentally, regarding the point I was going over above about feats and getting dex bonunes on weapons: I had a go at rerolling my MC, and can confirm that weapon finesse and slashing grace taken together do give dex bonues both to attack and damage modifiers. From the feats' wording I am not sure that is intended, but it still works. So that does open up a wider set of choices for weapons for dex melee users.
 
So nearing the end of chapter two, and things seem to be going quite smoothly now. Not a huge fan of the kingdom RNG failing me 85% success chances three times in an row, but so far it's not had a disastrous impact and everything is still stable.

Also as time goes on I am becoming less of a fan of Vancian magic in games in general. Unless you know what's coming it's annoying for wizards to have to pre-prepare spells, and the limited casts per rest means most magic users don't contribute much except to the bigger fights. I know it's the classic DnD way and I've loved lots of games that use this system, but the more I play them the more I think it needs to go.

Overall, though, still really enjoying this game. Having to think quite tactically about some fights, using terrain and bottlenecks and choosing the right buffs and spells. Good depth to the character system that I am slowly getting to grips with (though still not 100% sure how my arcan pool and associated abilities actually work despite having read up on it). Nereids and Nixies can take a long walk off a short pier, though...
 
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