Through the Ashes DLC

[MMJ]

Hello everyone.

So ... I started the new DLC, and ... oh, boy. I think Owlcat hates us, big time. (For the record, I play on core, and already managed to finish the base game in this difficulty. I have yet to play Inevitable excess, though).

I understand that the point of this DLC is :

-to show us how hard it is to survive a demonic invasion for "normal" people (as normal as a Pathfinder character can be, anyway)
-to try to be stealthy and to avoid as much combat as you can.

On the paper, the idea seem nice. But in reality, well ... I'm not really far into the DLC, but I have already seen a lot of problematic things.

-Crappy gear : yeah, you're level 1 and it suck big time ... but the gear you got manage to be even worst than you are : mock weapon who gave you a -2 to attack, no armor at all, ... In itself it wouldn't be a problem if there wasn't what follows next.

- I suffered through non-avoidable combats way too overtuned for a level 1 group ("Hey, you just survived a CR4 monster who was immune to slashing/piercing weapon, with a nauseating aura, and all of this with a level 1 team ? Good job ! You saved ? Good ! Here, have another combat against another CR4 monster, right now ! No needs to thank us !")

Not to mention that a ton of ennemies can (and will, since you're never gonna roll more than 4 on the D20) poison/disease you. And a poisonned/diseased character at level 1 hurt a lot. Especially now, since you have to fiund first aid kits to use the "treat affliction" action.

-Finally, there are some monsters that are clearly way too strong to be attacked by your level 1 nobodys (like CR6 and up, around +8 to attack against your unarmored characters, 15 to 20 damages per hit, AC around 20 ...).

"So, just sneak around them !". Oh, I wish i could. But since they got around +15 to Perception, they see me about 95 % of the time.

So, yeah, i'm probably being salty there, but I really wish that Owlcat was more focused on telling a story rather than designing ennemies who can one shot you at every encounter.

[fox5s]

That sounds like a DLC that hasn't been released yet. Did you get lost and are posting on the Public forums rather than the Beta forums?

EDIT: Nevermind! just checked the store and there it is. My bad!

[MMJ]

Oh ? I don't know, I did a big update today, and the DLC was installed after that (I have the season pass).

I thought it was released, since i hadn't followed this game latest announcements for quite some time. My bad if I have posted this topic in the wrong section.

[fox5s]

Nah, you got it right. Again, my bad.

[seeker1]

Oh no, the DLC was released today, you are not wrong. (I can't access it yet for other reasons, but that's cuz the Patch isn't yet available for Mac. Granted, I want the patch. Not so sure about the DLC.)

If there was a Public Beta of it, I never saw anything about it.

I was waiting for feedback on it, so far all I've seen is bug reports, some of which might be mod-caused, but ....

Now I'm gonna ask you one question, because this to me is interesting. More than the combat difficulty, in the dev interview someone posted recently ... they said all the fights would be avoidable, though the focus was on survival.

You seem to be saying otherwise. Very interesting. (They also said fights would give no XP. Weird decision.)

I gotta ask you one other thing as I'm dying to know: can you - do you - ever have more than 3 party members?

[MMJ]

So, to answer the questions in a non-spoilery way :

-I started to play this DLC "blind", not knowing anything about it (except that it would be about "nobody" survivors during the assault on Kenabres). So i started with an archeologist bard : it seemed a good choice when you don't know what awaits you.

-To drive the point that you are NOT playing the main character of the story (aka the commander of the 5th crusade), you are just given 15 points to create your character instead of the usual 25.

-About combat granting no xp : that's right. You have to success at specific skill checks and enter in new areas to get xp.

-About the party size : you start with a single character, then you're joined by an NPC. And a little bit after that (like 30 min. to 1 hour, depending on your pacing) you have the opportunity to "recruit" 3 other characters. You got to create those characters, like they where mercenary. They are 15 points buy too. If there are more people to recruit down the road, i'm not there yet.

-And about the combat being all avoidable : I explored two type of areas. The first one, the place where you start the DLC, you have a combat thrown at you at the begining, but after that, all the rest can be avoided i think (but you better spec your character in stealth, if you want to avoid them ...).

The second area ... well, some combats seemed unavoidable to me : one of them is set up in a way that makes me think you can't avoid it (you're given a special thing to do to manage what would be an almost impossible combat if played normally), and two other big combats are the "surprise ! There was a monster there !" type of combat.

And there is the case of the big ass monsters, way too strong for you, that you can technically avoid ... that is, if they hadn't theyr perception skill pumped so high.

Hope it helps. I guess this is the DLC for people who want to play a stealthy gnome rogue ...

[ArchaicReaper]

Originally posted by seeker1:

Oh no, the DLC was released today, you are not wrong. (I can't access it yet for other reasons, but that's cuz the Patch isn't yet available for Mac. Granted, I want the patch. Not so sure about the DLC.)

If there was a Public Beta of it, I never saw anything about it.

I was waiting for feedback on it, so far all I've seen is bug reports, some of which might be mod-caused, but ....

Now I'm gonna ask you one question, because this to me is interesting. More than the combat difficulty, in the dev interview someone posted recently ... they said all the fights would be avoidable, though the focus was on survival.

You seem to be saying otherwise. Very interesting. (They also said fights would give no XP. Weird decision.)

I gotta ask you one other thing as I'm dying to know: can you - do you - ever have more than 3 party members?

I'm only a little ways into it, but you get npc party members kind of like Varnhold's Lot.

[seeker1]

OK. The thing is, the pre-DLC announcement said there would be 2 companions (at least that they mentioned) -- a gnome mage and a tiefling rogue.

Based on what you've just said, looks like eventually you can make 3 more, but as mercs. (Of a kind.) OK. So eventually you can have a party of 6. Now I know that answer.

The "15 point buy" BTW is weaker even than the normally weaker point buy for mercs in the main campaign (20 pts vs. MC's 25 pts). So yeah, it's a design that all your guys are gonna be ... below par.

[MMJ]

15 points buy is the "default" points buy in the tabletop RPG, but most DM (me included) give the 20 points to the players. 25 points is supposed to be for "very epic characters" only.

But again, the 15 points buy wouldn't be a problem if the ennemies where not so overtuned.

[Memnarch]

Originally posted by MMJ:

oh, boy. I think Owlcat hates us, big time.

Now you know how I and any others feeI about the stupid amount of puzzIes when it Iaunched.

[MMJ]

Yes, i heard that the last DLC was filled to the brim with puzzles (that is partly why i didn't try this DLC yet, to be honest). So far, i had only one "puzzle" to do in Through the ashes, and it was a pretty simple one with trial and error - took me 5 minutes max.

[patch]

unplayable for me so far unless you pick a stealthy class who can sneak past all the encounters and quick save every minute. even then the perception checks are impossible. swarms of spiders that you cannot kill that poison and ability damage your character, other enemies that poison and disease your character with no way of healing the ability damage if you survive the encounter. a very unpleasant experience.
There are probably ways through the storyline by exploring and avoiding enemies, but you are going to die constantly in the painful chore of trial and error, and in my case lose interest.
maybe I will restart and a try magic class that can deal damage without armour or weapons or unarmed monk?
I have no idea what Owlcat are thinking with this, pretty disappointing

[BlahC]

So far I do not like the new DLC at all. I get what was attempted here, make the player treasure every item, get by just barely and be an average guy, not a big hero. But honestly, this does not work well with Pathfinder as a ruleset and not with Pathfinder Wrath as a game.
I'm not sure if this is just my luck, but I seem to be using D10 instead of D20, every battle I need to reload plenty of times because I never seem to get high rolls and the enemies just always hit. This and the constant poison crap are the reasons why I spend so much time in the loading screen, it's just endless. And well, the only reason that the loading screen does not take up 90% of my playtime is because the game plays terribly sluggish right now, no idea why. And don't get me started on the level design, narrow paths are just *so* much fun here.
What I would have liked is a low magic setting, where a +1 ring is something special already and maybe plate armor is hard to come by, but if you have to spend 4 hours (including reload times) in the first dungeon with wooden weapons and almost naked, there is just no fun to be had.
Summary: The DLC is not fun at all (for me), I suck at luck and that the damn game crashed just when I finished this cursed dungeon and leveled up is a good enough reason for me to not touch the game until at least 3 more patches.

[fox5s]

Wow... such complaints. I just streamed six+ hours playing the new DLC on Core difficulty and I'm not really having problems. Yeah, there's a decent amount of save skumming but this game is designed expecting you to do that.

The real problem area that I had to save skum hard for was those "tougher than you should be facing" monsters. They give you options to deal with them but I ended up having to save skum a decent amount to get things in the proper position for those options to actually work correctly. But I didn't actually mind all that.

My only real annoyance is that in the second area (where you get the three mercs) there are two places that you can open using Tools. One you can access the same area via an alternate route. The other can ONLY be bypassed using those Tools. Guess which one you see first? Guess how many Tools are available in the map? So annoying. >.>

[Tokala]

Yes, a little disappointing and I agree in everything you mentionened.
I liked the idea, but I think, there should at least be more environment usages. Besides that many enemies does not seem to be avoidable , the other ones have high perception. Some can be solved by timing, And on top rather bad rolls - so it is a loading marathon :-( Right now I am struggling with this spider boss :-( I took the mercenaries, which have been suggested , maybe I should build them up myself - though I would not like to start it all over from there.
And this stupid First Aid Kit seems to be in the main game now too - at least to pick up and for sale.

[EvilDonut]

I mean, i love resident evil saga and its survival flavour (as do you, i imagine, seeing your profile pic), but on a crpg....eeeeeh....