I should've thought a little harder about a title for this series that would allow for multiple parts. Oh well. We're back again to discuss more of Pillars of Eternity, side-stepping deeper plot and side-quest spoilers for the sake of the game's mechanics. Specifically, how it tries to be as close to an Infinity Engine game as possible for nostalgia's sake while also making a necessary departure from the copyrighted AD&D rules that governed same. The pleasures of discovering this game have thus been twofold: getting to pontificate about a style of CRPG that meant a lot to me as a younger man, and exploring the ins and outs of an entirely new RPG system. Deep mechanics and a focus on player versatility are why I'm so attached to the RPG genre, after all.

Party

Won't be too much more this time, though I did pick up a fifth party member:

• Aravella the Ranger has been soldiering on. She's kept to the back and now has a nifty modal ability (which is just what the game calls active skills you can turn on or off) in which she'll fire arrows at a slower rate but with much higher accuracy. I'll be going into why accuracy is so important a little later, but suffice it to say once I figured out how it works I saw the merits to any buff that can raise your to-hit capability.
• Erstma the Barbarian's learned a few modal abilities too. Most of them tend to involve sacrificing defense for increased attack, naturally enough for a barbarian, so I've been careful to ensure that Aravella's wolf always leads the charge so that enemies will focus on it instead of Erstma. I'm thinking of getting her something that drains Endurance to keep her in the fight longer, though I could just as easily find a Cleric type for the group for the same purpose. She has HP for days, so it's no big deal if she takes a few knocks. If anything, people are getting fatigued (which is a permanent condition that lowers accuracy and Endurance until the party rests, which is essentially the game saying "yo, you better rest now") long before anyone gets too far into the red health-wise.
• Ori the Rogue's becoming one of my best tools for combat, specifically initiating combat. Her sneak attack seems to proc often enough whenever the enemy's occupied by someone else, but it's a guaranteed sneak attack (if not necessary a guaranteed hit) if she's in scouting mode (i.e. stealth and search mode) before launching an attack. She can then run from the now irate enemies into the ambush I've set up a little further away. Of course, there are times when she can't quite escape quickly enough, so maybe I've gotta rethink this surprise attack plan. (I believe she can do even more damage if she gets to within a couple of meters, a backstab in other words, but then she really will have no way to run back to the others in time. I'd better make sure the target dies in that one hit if Ori's going to stay standing.)
• Adsho the Wizard's pretty much what I expected from a mage. Her four spell slots per level don't actually refer to how often she can cast magic: rather, she has a certain number of "charges" per level. That means if she has three charges for level one spells, she can cast any three of those four spells in any amount, even the same one three times. It's actually the spell system introduced in the original Final Fantasy, oddly enough, which Square also conceived as a way to distance Final Fantasy from the D&D systems of the games that inspired it, like Wizardry. Additional grimoires not only give you more loadouts to play with, but they also tend to come with spells written in them that the Wizard can learn. It costs money, and gets pricey if the spell's a higher level, but it's an elegant way to handle spell acquisition. I can just haul around these books with half a dozen new spells in it and learn them whenever I have the spare cash, and the books remain useful thereafter.
• My new character is an Aumaua Chanter named Kana Rua I found loitering outside the dilapidated keep of Caed Nua (and, oh boy, a lot more on that place later). He's my first pre-gen PC as a result, and for an enormous guy with jagged teeth (the Aumaua are sort of like large sharkpeople with Hawaiian names, which I'm totally on board with) he's something of a bookish nerd. He wants a book or a tablet of some kind from the basement of the Caed Nua dungeon, and given that I'm heading that way I'm happy to have him around for the time being. Someone asked last time how involved the pre-gen PCs get with the story, and Kana Rua often seems happy to interject whenever I'm talking to someone. (But, like, not in as rude a way as I'm making it sound. Regular BioWare type party interaction stuff.) There's a little pop-up on the character's portrait whenever they want to talk to you, usually when you learn something that relates to a quest they want you to do but mostly after any big story moment, so you can get their impressions and thoughts on what just transpired. I'm hoping to find another PC like Kana to take up the sixth slot in my party, and it's going to have to be another tank-class. I have four range-attackers now! That's not a good balance.
• Chanters, it turns out, are like Bards but slightly different. While Bards are known for being versatile fighter/rogue/mage hybrids in D&D, which are they are here as well, they're usually limited to either singing in combat, which buffs everyone in earshot, or participating in a more active role with swords and spells. Chanters can do both simultaneously, which is convenient, but the way their chants work means they need a little time to warm up. As a Chanter performs, parties receive temporary buffs for single lines of lyrics that come and go as the song progesses, but the Chanter earns an extra "Phrase" each time one of these lines is complete. Once they reach a certain number of Phrases, they can use the rhythm they've got going to cash those Phrases in for a stronger, spell-like Invocation. Some of these Invocations seem to be pretty useful, ranging from stronger buffs to creature summons and evocation magic, and they're all unique to the Chanter. Funnily enough, the thing that immediately came to mind once going through Kana Rua's "spell list" is that Chanters sound like what would happen if you turned the "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" guy in Star Trek: The Next Generation into an RPG class. Each Phrase and Invocation has a name like "Blessed Was Wengridh, Quickest of His Tribe" or "At the Sight of their Comrades, their Hearts Grew Bold", each of which has their own unique effect. These guys are definitely fun, and I recommend leaving a slot open for Kana Rua once you reach Caed Nua (it's a story quest location and the thing between you and the rest of the world map, so you literally can't miss it).

General Mechanics

All right, I didn't cover much of the general stuff last time because I was too busy gushing over my party of nondescript hirelings, so I'll get a little deeper into some of the stuff I mentioned last time now that I understand it better, as well as a few new rules I've started to get used to.

• I'll start with the world, first of all, since I didn't really talk about much of Obsidian's worldbuilding here. One of the hardest challenges Pillars of Eternity had to overcome, I imagine, was creating a new fantasy world from scratch; something that takes most fantasy and sci-fi authors many years to do. (I should say that most authors only create the geography necessary for the story they want to tell in order to avoid getting too bogged down in unnecessary and irrelevant lore, but even so it took decades for places like Middle-earth, the Discworld and Westeros and its neighboring lands to properly coalesce.) Eora, the world of Pillars of Eternity, and specifically the Dyrwood area that the game takes place in, appears to be largely based on Welsh/Irish Gaelic/Celtic mythology. Lots of standing stones, nature gods, indigenous hut-dwelling peoples (i.e. the modern day Welsh (sorry for that)) and a larger plot concerning blights and the unbalancing of the natural order of things. I've obviously not pried too deep here, nor do I want to for this feature, but it feels both novel and familiar, sort of like Mass Effect's universe. I guess what I'm probably trying to say is that they invented just enough new stuff about their world to not come off as too derivative, so hats off to 'em.
• I mentioned accuracy earlier, so here goes: D&D judges the accuracy of one's attacks with a D20 roll (as in, a die that has twenty sides. For some reason I remember those being called icosahedrons. Man, the trivia you pick up, huh?). If the D20 roll is high enough to overcome the opponent's armor class, after applying all of the attacker's bonuses they are due, then the attack counts as a hit and the player rolls for damage, a figure that is again based on their weapons and stat bonuses. PoE is a little different: if a character rolls for an attack the resulting number can be anywhere from 0 to over 100. If you roll under 15, you miss. If you roll 16-50 you "graze" the opponent, doing minimal damage but applying any bonuses you have to your attack, like additional fire damage or a knockback effect. Grazes tend to be very small amounts of damage though, usually less than half of what would've normally been incurred. Rolling a 51-100 results in a hit, doing full damage on top of any special effects. Anything over 100 is a critical attack, doing even more damage. Accuracy is reduced by shields and, I believe, heavier armor types. Armor also serves to slow recovery time down for attacks and abilities the heavier it is, but also boosts damage reduction in turn. Fairly straightforward, but I saw myself doing lots of Graze attacks before I figured out what was going on. Turns out if you want powerful "DPS" type attackers, you have to make them relatively unarmored. It's a tough trade-off to make, so it seems prudent to go back to that MMO school of thought of considering tanks and DPS attackers separately when putting together a party. (At least it makes the game a little more accessible to those who grew up with World of Warcraft instead of Baldur's Gate.)
• Damage Reduction. There's multiple types, and in this sense the game is folding elemental and magic resistance into armor class. Any piece of armor has a DR value attached to it, reducing damage by that amount after every attack. Many magic items will give you bonus DR to various specific damage types: for instance, the first blacksmith merchant in the game has a belt that boosts both slash and pierce damage reduction, which are two of the three physical types of damage along with crushing. Again, it's a pretty elegant system and far more straightforward than good ol' THAC0: The more armor you wear, the higher your DR, and it's very easy to comprehend that number as "the number of damage points you ignore after every hit". It just feels a little unusual to see DR used this way, because any ability or item that gives you damage reduction in regular D&D tends to be a rare and coveted thing.
• Crafting! Like learning spells, any character can improve their weapon anywhere by spending a bit of money and some resources. The stronger the upgrade, the more expensive the process and the more rare the ingredients. Unlike what I erroneously stated last time, gems are NOT vendor trash and are actually one third of the components needed for upgrading: every upgrade demands one type of gem, one type of plant (these grow everywhere, so just keep Tab pressed if you've moving around outdoors to spot them easier) and one type of monster spoil. @karkarov was kind enough to inform me that it's never a smart idea to sell anything that appears in the "ingredients" tab of the inventory, and the player should opt instead to sell equipment they don't intend to use as well as notes and other books they find in order to raise any needed funds. I'm usually pretty smart about not selling ingredients, but I guess I was thrown off by how similar these gemstones are to the gemstones of the Infinity Engine games: those things really are useless, unless it's a diamond or something else super rare. I don't know if crafting on the whole is something I'll visit too often: I'm finding a lot of weapons with the "Fine" modifier (which raises accuracy and damage) just lying around in dungeons, so maybe I won't need to craft magical stuff too often. I'll be holding onto all these ingredients regardless though, 'cause you never know...
• I'll just copy/paste this one from the comments of the last update): Something I forgot to note this time but really impressed me about the game after reading a tooltip about it is that on higher difficulties (except for the hardest, "Path of the Damned"), the enemies don't get any stronger but the placement of them changes. So it's sort of like Doom's philosophy behind its difficulty levels: a room becomes harder on a higher difficulty because it has more imps and maybe an undead sergeant in it, but they don't hit any harder or act any differently than they already did. Not only does that mean less worrying about invisible dice rolls you already can't trust, but if you were to replay the game on a higher setting it'd feel completely different. At least as far as fighting through its encounters goes, anyway. (I'm on Normal difficulty for the record, since I felt bad for easy-streeting MGS 3 last time. Higher difficulties in RPGs usually means playing more tactically and resetting a lot to be adequately prepared, which'll just add another ten hours onto what will no doubt be an already long playthrough.)
• For the final part of this update, I'm going to enthuse about this stronghold feature. The aforementioned Caed Nua becomes the player's stronghold once the story mission there is complete. Each upgrade takes a considerable amount of funds and a number of days to complete, but will eventually provide all the amenities of a town like the Gilded Vale, as well as a whole bunch of resources to draw from and more quests and adventures to take part in. I absolutely adore bases of operations like these in games, as evinced by this list I wrote a while back about games that do this sort of "upgradeable homestead" feature. I guess I'm more than a bit of a homebody, so I always like to have roots in a big sprawling RPG like this, even if it's just a moldy old keep that needed a few less undead monstrosities roaming around it before it could get any cozier. Y'know, your standard fixer-upper. I'm looking forward to spending all my cash renovating this place, dropping by occasionally to see how my recruited characters are doing and finding out what else there is to be done.

Speaking of which, that's my cue to leave you all for a while to go do more adventuring, with my solemn promise to return someday and keep you all updated. There's not a whole lot of the game's base mechanics that I've yet to cover here, so maybe I'll work on some "advanced tips" just as soon as I'm qualified enough to do so. Catch you later.