Pathfinder: Kingmaker

[Krud]

I was excited about this game, having played pen-and-paper Pathfinder for... however many years it's been out now. I'd heard good things Kingmaker (the tabletop version), but didn't know anyone wanting to run it, so this seemed like the next best thing. And I loved the game... up to the point where I had to start managing my kingdom, and for some reason it just really tedious really fast for me. I quickly found myself low on resources, particularly in the "human" resources department (though not literally humans, of course.) Events would come up and I wouldn't have the appropriate person available to take care of it because I'd assigned them to something else a day earlier.

I think I actually prefer the Stronghold system of Pillars of Eternity, even though it's a bit more scripted. I still get that feeling of ruling over a domain, but without feeling like I'm having to juggle two different games at once. I don't know if I just got off on the wrong foot with the Kingmaker portion, or if I'm just not cut out for that gameplay style, or what. (I'm no good at the likes of Crusader Kings, either.)

I want to give it another shot since I liked the rest of the game, but it seems problematic that the namesake portion ended up being a turnoff for me.

 

[drunkpunk]

I actually really like the kingdom management for the most part, but I will admit I think it could have been so much better. It does feel like there is way too much thrown at you to try and figure out what to prioritize, and the inadequate number of companions/advisors really shines in the early stages. I also really hate the projects that require you eat 14 days, it really exacerbates the issues of trying to decide what to prioritize while also making the story quests in time. I actually just failed my first playthrough because I ended up stuck between a story quest that was about to fail or my kingdom failing due to some new event that popped up. I know I could turn off kingdom management failure events but that just seems kinda excessive... it's a big part of the game I dig, but it just seems a bit overbearing in its impacts as well as its restrictions in how much you can do.

I will say I still absolutely love the writing of the game, but it has other issues I struggle with, too. The pacing is weird. The difficulty spikes all over the place. The dungeons feel really, really dragged out. And there is SO much combat.

But the writing makes it all worth it. The inconsequential debates alone were worth it, but the game also does something no RPG has done in a long time for me, and that's make me seriously consider how I respond to the decisions you are forced to make. Not just from a gameplay perspective, but also from a role play perspective.

All things considered, I'm really looking forward to Wrath of the Righteous.

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

I had to turn on the option that kingdom events can't fail the game at some point on my first try. I was in a spot where nothing I could try would give me even a chance, so that option was literally the only thing I could do except for starting over.

Speaking of options, it's really worth praising Owlcat for the amount of stuff we can customize, from UI to difficulty settings.

Currently I just got out of a meeting with Purple Hide (you know who if you played it). First meeting I forgot he casts Fireball and my team got downed with one spell. Oopsie. Second time went a bit Rambo on him and it worked. To this point I was just with Harrim and Amri (Linzi got kidnapped) and one of the reasons I went to that location was to get Jaethal and Valerie. Now feeling like we actually stand a chance

 

[drunkpunk]

That is very true, the difficulty options we can tweak are absolutely amazing. They offer a lot of freedom to play how you want without punishing you for it.

 

[FreezerBurn]

I'm 2 hours in and I came upon a werewolf... it didn't end well

 

[Zloth]

I'm 2 hours in and I came upon a werewolf... it didn't end well

It did for the werewolf!

I liked the Kingdom management at first but it did get very tedious. A few hints:

• Don't fret about the villages too much. They can help boost things but the event cards are where the big points are found.
• Don't worry about researching curses. You'll want to handle them eventually but that's way down the line and those things take your priest forever to solve.
• You are NOT going to have time to train everyone up to their max. Not even close! You'll need to think about who the kingdom needs trained the most. (Eventually, in the later parts of the game, you'll be able to halve that training time and catch everyone up.)
• You are NOT going to have time to do all the problems, never mind the opportunities. Again, pick and choose. Problems get priority but, if nobody has a good chance at solving a problem, maybe there's an opportunity hanging around that cancel the problem's penalty?
• The Hill is the TOP priority! When that battle comes around, you better not be stuck training somebody because it hits your kingdom with harsh penalties (I think) every day.

You'll want a bunch of advisors but the one you want the most is an archmagi. You probably won't get that one first but the earlier the better. Once your magic stat gets high enough, it unlocks teleportation which... well, you can imagine.

 

[Sarafan]

And I loved the game... up to the point where I had to start managing my kingdom, and for some reason it just really tedious really fast for me.

I'm not a huge fan of the kingdom management part myself. Thankfully there's an option to turn it off and concentrate on the other aspects of the game.

Currently I just got out of a meeting with Purple Hide (you know who if you played it). First meeting I forgot he casts Fireball and my team got downed with one spell. Oopsie. Second time went a bit Rambo on him and it worked.

Yeah, I found this tactic very useful when confronting the guy. At this stage you don't have access to third level spells, so someone must blow up all of these mobs for you.

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

Update. Randomly decided with my 4th level party to visit some random place. It had "oak" in it's name. There' was a troll. It almost ate my whole company. Survived by the skin of our teeth. We retreated back to Oleg's place.

Also first time meeting Octavia and Regongar. Seriously, first time I missed them totally 'cause I wasted so much time doing other stuff, that I never got back to Technic League encampment as I had to rush the main quest to not fail with hours to spare.

 

[Sandwitch]

//Edit - the forum didn't show the last two posts before I replied, sorry! Is the option to turn off "kingdom events can't fail" the solution to stopping the countdown? (I'm asking as someone who has only read reviews, so forgive me if I'm paraphrasing incorrectly.)

I know I've asked this before, so I'm sorry! But I've heard there's an overarching "limited time before something kills us all" part to the main quest. Given the update, are y'all finding the "countdown to save X" main quest part of the game distracting?

Just a personal preference thing for me, but I tend not to like games where you have a limited amount of time to complete the main quest, because I'm a.) very inefficient and b.) like to wander.

So Outer Wilds, etc, were all kind of stress-inducing vs. fun.

Is that the case for you guys here?

 

[Zloth]

I've heard folks complain about the time limits but I don't remember them being so bad. They mostly limited how much training I could do with my kingdom, not the quests. I would end up spinning through the last weeks/months doing training and handling events until the next Hill event showed up. Maybe others were resting a lot more? Or exploring the various areas more??

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

I am not fan of time limit either, but in Pathfinder usually you have enough time between "phases" to do at least most of the things you want - exception is being me in my first time during first chapter, when I had no healer in party and was resting till fully restored. Then time flew by quite damn fast.

Kingdom events can't fail will prevent losing the game because one of your kingdom stats drop to 0, which may happen if things go horribly wrong.

 

[Sandwitch]

I am not fan of time limit either, but in Pathfinder usually you have enough time between "phases" to do at least most of the things you want - exception is being me in my first time during first chapter, when I had no healer in party and was resting till fully restored. Then time flew by quite damn fast.

Kingdom events can't fail will prevent losing the game because one of your kingdom stats drop to 0, which may happen if things go horribly wrong.

Ah, gotcha - I'm going to start a new game then. I definitely don't like this Sword of Damocles feeling, but given so many people say that there's plenty of time, going to give it another try! Thanks for the feedback!

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

Ah, gotcha - I'm going to start a new game then. I definitely don't like this Sword of Damocles feeling, but given so many people say that there's plenty of time, going to give it another try! Thanks for the feedback!

Even now, I am in troll chapter and I am exploring the hell out of Narlmarshes. I already know where to go, but I do every other thing possible. I still have over 140 days before next trouble appears on the Bald Hill. Sometimes other events will leave you less time, but really, you should be fine.

Current session I just finished. Went to the witch. Found ghoul. Ghoul wants coins. I tried getting coins from well. Whatever was inside the well murdered my party. Reminded to myself tomorrow: learn a spell protecting from lightning, communal preferably.

Level 6 right now, got Ekundayo instead of Olivia and I love how he massacres everything from afar.

 

[Sandwitch]

I am literally still in the castle/thing/whatever in the intro, my main character/wizard keeps getting one-shotted by the bows. Luckily, I've just gotten the other characters, so I think I can finally have a front-line.

I've got it on turn-based, and I'm trying to feel out whether distance and positioning really matter or not--that is, if I'm a few squares further back, do the bows have a much harder time hitting me?

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

Every ranged weapon have a range, as long as your mage is in range, it may be focused by enemy archers. I don't believe there are any penalties applied if you're on the edge of their range for example.

Defensive spells like Shield and Mage Armor helps a lot and you can also try breaking line of sight with enemies targeting you so they focus on someone else or chase you and risk getting in range of your frontline. Also charging archers/mages is a good idea, closing the distance for all the opportunity attacks works well.

 

[Sandwitch]

Breaking the line of sight is what I ended up doing. The AI, at least on normal, doesn't seem to target the distance or weaker characters first (thank goodness.)

I think you're right, don't think there's any penalty--it's basically in range/out of range, so that's good to know!

 

[Sandwitch]

Update to my new game - I'm clearly not #doingitright, as I ended up at the Sycamore depth at level 2, and I'm getting my 4$$ handed to me. It's beautiful visually, and I can see they really modeled the rules, but it's kind of uneven and feels euro-janky.

I say this as someone who loved D:OS2 and Wasteland 2 and didn't feel that either was unfair in their respective early game difficulty.

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

What is your party composition? Level 2 of that dungeon can be a bit nasty. When I was there recently with just 3 people, I avoided few parts (skeletons, awful giant centipede) and had to leave outside to rest quite a bit. But once I got 5 people on my team and leveled up, this place became a breeze.

Also, the difficulty of this area depends on your choices (choosing either warring faction or antagonizing them both).

Start can be a bit bumpy. For me, it was next chapter final boss that was first real obstacle.

In my game currently at Silverstep Lake Village and got myself into something odd. I am not sure why, but when my party reached a certain point on the map, suddenly we fell under some kind of aura. Immediately retreated, but still got myself two people permanently stuck in endless checks. I went around the area, searching for somebody "creating" this aura, found nothing. Even started hurling fireballs around in vain hopes of hitting somehow somebody.
What helped? Resting. Seriously, I could rest there and after rest the effects were gone. Huh.

 

[Sandwitch]

What is your party composition? Level 2 of that dungeon can be a bit nasty. When I was there recently with just 3 people, I avoided few parts (skeletons, awful giant centipede) and had to leave outside to rest quite a bit. But once I got 5 people on my team and leveled up, this place became a breeze.

Also, the difficulty of this area depends on your choices (choosing either warring faction or antagonizing them both).

Start can be a bit bumpy. For me, it was next chapter final boss that was first real obstacle.

In my game currently at Silverstep Lake Village and got myself into something odd. I am not sure why, but when my party reached a certain point on the map, suddenly we fell under some kind of aura. Immediately retreated, but still got myself two people permanently stuck in endless checks. I went around the area, searching for somebody "creating" this aura, found nothing. Even started hurling fireballs around in vain hopes of hitting somehow somebody.
What helped? Resting. Seriously, I could rest there and after rest the effects were gone. Huh.

Thanks so much for sharing - and the screenshot too.

My party is -
Amiri
My character (mage)
Linzi
Valerie
Harrim

And I've pretty much stuck with the journey post Oleg as the game seemed to suggest--I wandered into the berry patch, made it mostly through the cave, and then met the swarm, and backtracked. And then I got to the sycamore overworld area, took the side of the Mites, and defeated most of the barbarian/thieves and the wolfs. I've got the difficulty on normal, except I increased the resistance for enemies to 100% (from 80%)--and I've got it such that the experience is shared.

What I don't seem to get is how everyone posting seems to be at level 3, when I'm not that close to level 3. And they seem to still be having a hard time with the skeletons in the cave, among other enemies. On the one hand, that makes me feel better that I'm not totally sucking, on the other hand, I'm confused by what I've misssed. The last bit that's a little frustrating is, in an attempt to find other areas to level up, I'm backtracking a lot, which is burning through rest and therefore days.

Ack!

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

That's solid party, I guess you're just underleveled for now. Nothing to be ashamed of.

I believe I wandered around the Oleg's place before going to join the kobold/mites was and explored few places. There are few locations where you can actually "deal with" whatever is inside, some are tough or deadly (nothing like meeting a manticore on level 2 by pure bad luck). Exploring these, even without any quest, can be a good idea. You will get some experience and sometimes a good stuff that will help you a lot.

So: yeah, explore. If you can't get through zone, backtrack and try seeing other zones. As long as you remain in the first "zone" (border you can see by some options on world map) you should be fine. Exploring really pays off, you may easily find equipment that will make current objectives almost trivial.

Visited my neighbour to the east. Spent 4 weeks helping advance my advisors, still have over two months before next curse strikes. Went to the Narlmarshes again, found lizardfolk village. They. Trashed. Me. Hard. Not even competition.
Found big nasty lizard. Sadly lack of cold iron is an issue for now. Silverstep Village is less happy with me as well. Level 8 and doing rather fine.

 

[Zloth]

@Sandwich, you might try hiring a bomber alchemist? They're superb against bunches of little enemies and swarms. Definitely save your game first but, at 2nd level, the character should be super cheap. I used mine up until Nok Nok showed up.

Amiri really didn't work out so well for me. Her armor was too weak to survive close combat. She would do great damage while she was alive but she would rarely make it all the way through a battle. After defeating the bandit lord, I basically gave her a desk job and hired a proper fighter as a custom character.

 

[Sandwitch]

That's solid party, I guess you're just underleveled for now. Nothing to be ashamed of.

I believe I wandered around the Oleg's place before going to join the kobold/mites was and explored few places. There are few locations where you can actually "deal with" whatever is inside, some are tough or deadly (nothing like meeting a manticore on level 2 by pure bad luck). Exploring these, even without any quest, can be a good idea. You will get some experience and sometimes a good stuff that will help you a lot.

So: yeah, explore. If you can't get through zone, backtrack and try seeing other zones. As long as you remain in the first "zone" (border you can see by some options on world map) you should be fine. Exploring really pays off, you may easily find equipment that will make current objectives almost trivial.

Visited my neighbour to the east. Spent 4 weeks helping advance my advisors, still have over two months before next curse strikes. Went to the Narlmarshes again, found lizardfolk village. They. Trashed. Me. Hard. Not even competition.
Found big nasty lizard. Sadly lack of cold iron is an issue for now. Silverstep Village is less happy with me as well. Level 8 and doing rather fine.

Gotcha - maybe I should restart back to Oleg's - if I can. So basically don't worry about the clock too much? It feels like every three nodes I'm losing a day due to resting from fatigue, and it's starting to make me concerned that I'm counting down the 80 or so days I have left 'til whatever happens happens. Will keep exploring then--or maybeeee try Wasteland 3 on Game Pass. (Realistically, am gonna wait 'til they patch that f&@#$.)

 

[Sandwitch]

@Sandwich, you might try hiring a bomber alchemist? They're superb against bunches of little enemies and swarms. Definitely save your game first but, at 2nd level, the character should be super cheap. I used mine up until Nok Nok showed up.

Amiri really didn't work out so well for me. Her armor was too weak to survive close combat. She would do great damage while she was alive but she would rarely make it all the way through a battle. After defeating the bandit lord, I basically gave her a desk job and hired a proper fighter as a custom character.

I'm having that issue with Amiri! Where I basically use my Mage Armor up buffing her instead of my main character. And hiring a character is ~2000 gold, which I can afford, but then I'm down to 700 or so gold. Worthwhile?

Also, thanks!

 

[drunkpunk]

I love Amiri! She's a bit squishy at first but buffs set that straight. Later on though she is INSANELY powerful. I think between her and Ekun they're doing most of the damage in my party. I usually roll with Valerie as my main "tank" sort of character and keep her in the front line with Amiri and it's worked pretty well.

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

Gotcha - maybe I should restart back to Oleg's - if I can. So basically don't worry about the clock too much? It feels like every three nodes I'm losing a day due to resting from fatigue, and it's starting to make me concerned that I'm counting down the 80 or so days I have left 'til whatever happens happens. Will keep exploring then--or maybeeee try Wasteland 3 on Game Pass. (Realistically, am gonna wait 'til they patch that f&@#$.)

As I mentioned previously in this thread, you should have enough time for most of the things you want to do. Unless you rest for days or weeks on end, then you may be in a bit of trouble - but having priest in party helps with that a lot. So just keep an eye how long your resting takes (9h rest + hunting anywhere between 1-16h is my usual experience) and how many days you have before time is up.
During my first playthrough I really messed this up and had to run towards Stag Lord's "mansion" and this made me fail one of optional missions during this chapter and consequently missed 2 NPC's that could enhance my party.

I'm having that issue with Amiri! Where I basically use my Mage Armor up buffing her instead of my main character. And hiring a character is ~2000 gold, which I can afford, but then I'm down to 700 or so gold. Worthwhile?

Also, thanks!

Does Mage Armor work with character's wearing armor? I tried that and their AC didn't change, so I assume it's not worthy my Amiri usually takes a lot of hits as well, I try to help with this with buffs or potions (Shield of Faith etc.). Or just have priest really close and ready to cast healing spell after healing spell. Amiri can dish out insane damage, but you gotta keep her alive and sometimes it's problematic.