On Normal difficulty (again, what I have direct experience with), this works solidly enough. You can also decide whether they’ll use their per-rest abilities or not. The ‘range’ at which the AI will kick in can also be set, dictating the point at which the companion will stay put or charge headlong into combat. A wizard, for example, can be set to ‘Damage’ (using powerful spells), ‘Crowd Control’ (buffs/debuffs) or ‘Spellsword’ (power self up and charge into battle). So people may well experience it for the first time when returning for White March.Īll party members now have optional AI, denoting how much you’re prepared to allow them to express themselves through violence. The White March has quite enough of those.Ī word about party AI too, as while it’s not specifically added by the expansion it has been released at the same time. These examples are rare, but make a welcome change from another ‘room of five or six enemies just stood around aimlessly’. In Cragholdt, a few enemies patrolled areas, allowing me to plan an opportune moment to attack and catch isolated foes in a fight. Though it was just a lone moment within Durgan’s Battery, one battle saw my adventurers flanked by archers and blocked to the front by more shielded opponents. There are early signs of encounter placement improving too. Certain enemies in the higher-level Cragholdt area are even outright immune to particular damage types, preventing some of the more rote, spell-based strategies. Countering enemy debuffs, reacting to their positioning, protecting the back line, and making sure my party were properly equipped to their strengths (it was easy to get a bit lazy before) all came into play. I can’t really speak for the people who found the ‘Path of the Damned’ difficulty setting too straightforward (I’m not that kind of RPG stat savant), but Normal now proved to be more of a tactical challenge. The AI is quite happy to try to disengage from combat with your beefier fighters and go after that scrawny mage at the back of your group as well. When combined with 2.0’s tendency to make them actually use those spells, it can get rather tricky. More creatures in this expansion can really take a sustained pummeling, and quite a few have access to damaging spells. White March foes seem particularly inclined towards paralysing or otherwise incapacitating your party members. Wake up Eder, people need your burly frame to hide behind. That’s in part down to the general 2.0 release tweaking enemy AI (everybody got that patch, not just expansion owners), and in part thanks to new and angry beasties who roam the countryside outside Durgan’s walls. And, you know, so I’d be reviewing it properly.Įven accounting for my time away from Pillars of Eternity, the battles in The White March were more taxing. I opted to do just that, so I wouldn’t sleep-walking through the fights (as was happening towards the end of the base game on Normal difficulty). Obsidian are aware that a sizeable proportion of players will be coming to this post-completion, so there’s an option to boost encounter difficulty for over-levelled parties (the rewards, however, remain the same). Since it’s a game with a definite ending, that means loading up a older save and doing a bit of retrospective ‘here’s something your party also got up to’ role-playing.īut even if you’re unable to suspend your insight into the bits of plot you already know about (like the Leaden Key, where for those who’ve finished the game there’s nothing especially revelatory), there’s plenty to challenge and surprise in this opening expansion chapter.
Not pictured: the burned out buildings and the overpowering smell of fish.įor many players, though, The White March will be attempted after already finishing the main Pillars of Eternity story.
For someone playing through the game the first time and hitting The White March at its designated story beat this should make just about enough sense to work as an incentive. The justification for dropping all of your activities in the Dyrwood and instead going on a hiking expedition is that a group from the Leaden Key (whom, sequentially, you’d have just learned more about) are also heading to Durgan’s Battery. If you were playing through the game from the start, The White March would open up after your investigations into the Woedican catacombs in Defiance Bay. The White March (Part One) delivers your party an urgent letter from Caed Nua (assuming you’ve played far enough to acquire the stronghold), and encourages them to head into the Northern mountains in search of a way to open the legendary Durgan’s Battery. In-keeping with its mission to be like-those-Infinity-Engine-RPGs-you-remember-but-also-slightly-different, Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity has now expanded.
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