What does it mean to "cheese" the game?

[northernwater]

I see people talk about cheesing the game. What is cheese in this game?

[StickyFingaz]

It's exploiting a flaw or a bug in the system to get to beat a fight. Or beat it with methods devs did not intend you to do it. Honestly I have NO idea how I could cheese this game but anyway...

I don't know if you have ever played Sekiro or Dark Souls but a good example of it is like:

- you try to beat a boss in a swordfight, like you are supposed to do. But you managed to figure out that when you jump onto his head, the boss gets interrupted. So you keep jumping onto his head non-stop, hit him, jump on his head, hit him, until you beat him. That's cheesing.

Or in Underrail, you can leave an area at any moment. So you can enter an area of hard enemies, fight them until you almost die, leave the area, heal yourself and get back to the area to fight again until you kill them. That's cheesing.

Button mashing in Mortal combat, that's cheesing.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Split-pulling of groups is cheesy, since it exploits enemy AI behavior restrictions that are in place as to make fleeing possible. When combat starts, most enemies approach for close combat. But if player's characters retreat far enough, enemies stop chasing, turn around and return to their original location. Carefully exploiting their behavior, one can reduce the number of enemies to 1-2, perhaps fighting only a single one that can be eliminated quickly. Rinse repeat.

Exploiting path-finding issues is cheesy, too.

Moving a character into a bottleneck location, then casting Withdraw on that character is a cheesy trick when you want to avoid friendly fire while relying heavily on AoE damage spells.

Preparing the quick item slots of multiple characters for spamming Scroll of Paralysis only because a specific boss enemy is known to not be immune to Paralyzed affliction is quite cheesy. On the other hand, one could argue it's a valid attack vector.

Originally, it used to be possible for a single character to set up more than one trap. And players quickly exploited that and bragged about it.

Last but not least:
--> https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Cheese

[StickyFingaz]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

Moving a character into a bottleneck location, then casting Withdraw on that character is a cheesy trick when you want to avoid friendly fire while relying heavily on AoE damage spells.

Wow, never thought of that, thank you ahaha

[StickyFingaz]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

Split-pulling of groups is cheesy, since it exploits enemy AI behavior restrictions that are in place as to make fleeing possible. When combat starts, most enemies approach for close combat. But if player's characters retreat far enough, enemies stop chasing, turn around and return to their original location. Carefully exploiting their behavior, one can reduce the number of enemies to 1-2, perhaps fighting only a single one that can be eliminated quickly. Rinse repeat.

Exploiting path-finding issues is cheesy, too.

Moving a character into a bottleneck location, then casting Withdraw on that character is a cheesy trick when you want to avoid friendly fire while relying heavily on AoE damage spells.

Preparing the quick item slots of multiple characters for spamming Scroll of Paralysis only because a specific boss enemy is known to not be immune to Paralyzed affliction is quite cheesy. On the other hand, one could argue it's a valid attack vector.

Originally, it used to be possible for a single character to set up more than one trap. And players quickly exploited that and bragged about it.

Last but not least:
--> https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Cheese

So If I understand correctly, any solo run uses a lot of cheeeeeese ;)

[mmelnibone]

My favourite cheese(s), so far, playing solo -

1 - don't bother trying to squarely fight the Adra Dragon - make her move closer with the initial conversation, go get 'scale breaker', and then come back to the ledge where you climb down. Aggro her from there with an AOE spell / scroll, and then just shoot her with a musket until she dies. Also works with chanter spells / archery.

2 - (and I've just got this to work) - immediately aggro the alpine dragon, then run into the little 'coffin' space in the top of her cave, with an ice blight blocking you in. Then shoot her to death with Persistence; then murder the underlings with Concelhaut and his magic stick.

3 - using 'Dragon Thrashed...' to level up soul-bound swords that need 'x' number of kills. Turns out that chant kills count towards almost all of those tasks.

4 - Fighting Xaurips at lv. 16 solely to level up a soul-bound sword via [3]

5 - When fighting large mobs for the Stalwart bounties, using Concelhaut to block bridges / etc (with his parasite healing spell and his magic stick), and 'Dragon Thrashed...' everyone to death. Concelhaut is really good against that 'immune to everything' mob of armoured guys that appear at Dyrford Crossing too. Using his hammer o' doom spell on enemy mages is always funny.

[psychotron666]

Using cheesy tactics. That applies in context for basically any game

[northernwater]

I think some of what is stated as cheese seems like legitimate tactics, especially moving and positioning in funnels.

[psychotron666]

Originally posted by northernwater:

I think some of what is stated as cheese seems like legitimate tactics, especially moving and positioning in funnels.

Anything that exploits bad AI is cheesing. Running In circles kiting enemies can be exploiting because the AI is too dumb to stop and go the other way or cut you off.

Or split pulling groups of people so only half of them fight you, when in reality they aren't just gonna walk away and leave their allies to fight you in lesser numbers.

Basically anything that uses game limitations like bad AI is cheesing. Basically anything you know isn't intended by the devs.

[Baldurs_Gate_2]

To exploit the game to overcome challenges that seem hard or impossible is pretty fun.

[northernwater]

Figuring out difficult solutions is fun.

A true exploit IMO is the only cheesy technique. An exploit being a manipulation of a bug in the software.

[Barnabas]

i cheesed a lot the first time i played, same with the first time i played baldurs gate but then you jsut get better as you go

[Baldurs_Gate_2]

Originally posted by northernwater:

Figuring out difficult solutions is fun.

A true exploit IMO is the only cheesy technique. An exploit being a manipulation of a bug in the software.

Is it a exploit in the Maerwald fight, if you lure the bugs to him so they kill him while you are just leaning back and watching?

[northernwater]

Originally posted by Baldurs_Gate_2:

Originally posted by northernwater:

Figuring out difficult solutions is fun.

A true exploit IMO is the only cheesy technique. An exploit being a manipulation of a bug in the software.

Is it a exploit in the Maerwald fight, if you lure the bugs to him so they kill him while you are just leaning back and watching?

I don't think so. Seems legit to me. I lured spiders to stags and stags killed the spiders. Seems like the game is working as intended in that case.

I think it is a clever solution, just like gaining good position.

[Gilmoy]

I think that's a perfectly valid strategy.
It's a mild exploit only in the sense that you need pre-knowledge to not stand and fight.

+ Talk to him, fall into combat, run out the door, wake up beetles
+ Don't talk to him, snipe a beetle, run into his room, stand behind him
(this works for beetle melee, but doesn't save you from beetles' targeted Spits)

This trick generalizes to many other fights on many PoE1 maps.
Monsters of same type tend to be mutually-friendly.
Monsters of different type are often hostile to all other "teams".

Just on Od Nua 1 (Maerwald's level), we have:
+ Team Maerwald vs. Team Beetles
+ Team Xaurips vs. Team Beetles
+ Team Bandits vs. Team Oozes
[_] Team Spider Queen vs. everybody?

Lure one group into the other, and they will fight each other.
Devs clearly wrote that behavior into both sides. Let us use what they wrote

[Mountain King]

Originally posted by psychotron666:

Originally posted by northernwater:

I think some of what is stated as cheese seems like legitimate tactics, especially moving and positioning in funnels.

Anything that exploits bad AI is cheesing. Running In circles kiting enemies can be exploiting because the AI is too dumb to stop and go the other way or cut you off.

Or split pulling groups of people so only half of them fight you, when in reality they aren't just gonna walk away and leave their allies to fight you in lesser numbers.

Basically anything that uses game limitations like bad AI is cheesing. Basically anything you know isn't intended by the devs.

Yeah, and anything that could very easily be prevented but isn't can safely be assumed to be intended by the devs, i.e. pulling partial groups of enemies.