Voss's page

My kingdom's story is it quickly entered a degenerative fail state beyond my control so I had to turn it to automatic and ignore it, or auto-lose on a mandatory rest that I had to take to progress in the climax of chapter 2. Since I would have lost 30 hours of progress... yeah.

Since turning it off, the game has been much less annoying.

While you're out adventuring—whether you're more a diplomat, monster hunter, or canny explorer—you can leave those companions not actively in your party to manage different aspects of the kingdom in your absence.

This is wrong, though. Companions in your party manage the kingdom just fine, even if they're on the edge of map outside your kingdom boundaries. Active companion and advisor aren't incompatible in any way at all.

Yep. No clear idea how, or what I could have done more effectively.

I am/was on the last part of Chapter 2, went after a likely source of infection, went back home to deal with a sudden emergency [actually I didn't do that the first time, tried to do this sequence the other way around, and my kingdom was destroyed, but that actually made sense], then set out after the real source.

I even skipped resting, clearing fatigue with the lay-on-hands mercy.

Except... after numerous fights, I'm tapped, out of resources and half my party is quite poisoned (because wow, poison in this place, and some of these monsters are just ridiculous, even on normal's 'slightly weaker' aka actual pathfinder stats). But if I rest, my kingdom is destroyed because... reasons? I'm honestly not sure why, the game's lack of feedback and explanation is really very frustrating here.

The kicker is... I have to rest to progress. A thing needs to happen to put in another thing to get the poison to kill the threat. [Nothing actually explains that, by the by]. But that ends the game for me.

The kicker is, looking at my saves:
I've got one in my throne room, on the 8th of Pharast, 4711.

The next, is at the [redacted] fort, on the 9th of Pharast.

I don't have any saves for the second stage at home, but presumably that happened on the 9th/10th of Pharast. [And I tried not doing this bit, but that ended up in a fail state for reasons that seem more sensible. As in, my capital was depopulated/eaten in my absence]

I'm currently... in the final bit in the [], and it's the 11th of Pharast in my quicksaves.

Given the travel times involved... I honestly don't know how I could have done this without getting a fail state on the obligatory rest.

But apparently there is some sort of timer. And either I completely messed things up at the beginning of the chapter with the trolls (where I let quite a bit of time pass to get improvements done, the ones where you have to let your character AND an advisor spend two weeks spinning). Or just the final bit has a timer, but it's somewhere between 48-72 hours, and you've got three maps to clear plus some long travel times.

I'm not entirely convinced its doable, and a lot of these fights were just absurd and not particularly fun, especially in the final area. There are a lot of monsters, and the vast majority have poison, some with absurdly high DCs.

So... yeah. Have some griping. The biggest part is the lack of feedback and information. The game simply doesn't tell you things, particularly the kingdom parts. And while most of the timers haven't bothered me, an invisible one that can fail you on a rest you must take (for reasons that aren't clear, both why this part has a timer and why you must rest) is immensely frustrating.

So, not sure how many details people know, but from the Owlcat message boards and the few beta videos lurking on youtube, most of the basics of the companions are out there, and might prove useful for planning PCs and party composition.

So, here are the long term companions, who can both join the party and act as kingdom advisors in later acts.

Warning: beta information subject to change
Past the point you meet them, you can make any decisions you like, but stats, feats, class(es) and archetypes are set. And some are weird.
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The first five come up in the prologue, and may or may not join you based on your decisions there (but you might have opportunities to convince them later)

Amiri, yes, the iconic human barbarian, complete with her bloody big sword.

Valerie, a human fighter, tower shield specialist.

Linzi, halfling bard, your personal chronicler. A lot of the narrative is from her PoV... which gets a little odd if you don't bring her or manage to get her to not come along from the get go (something I didn't think was possible at first).

Harrim, a dwarf cleric of Groetus. Decent battle cleric.

Jaethal, an elven inquisitor of Urgathoa. Oh, and she's dead. This complicates healing slightly. [She needs negative energy]

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Several companions can be found in Act One:

Regongar, a half orc magus [eldritch scion]
and
Octavia, a half elf rogue 1/wizard[transmuter] 1
are found together.

Tristian, a human cleric 3 [ecclesitheurge, as of the latest beta]

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Other companions are found later still (I know few details)
Jubilost, a gnome alchemist

Ekandros, a human ranger.

Noknok, a goblin rogue.

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Notably, there isn't a druid, monk, paladin or sorcerer npc, but there are two clerics.

And technically no full wizard, since Octavia is a rogue/wizard when you meet her, and set up for becoming an arcane trickster (which is made trivial since the advanced sneak attack feat is in the game, so she doesn't have to give up anymore spellcasting beyond that one rogue level)

So, while I realize Druids (and Bards) have largely lost all of their Celtic roots other than the names, this one is going to bug me. A Geas (particularly as a rule that dictates social or legal behavior, in particular hospitality) is from the same culture.

That Druids are the only casters who don't get access to this ritual is actually fairly offensive. It's cultural appropriation, no other way to describe it.