Various Thoughts

Since that first run through the stand-alone version of BtSL, I’ve played through the campaign once to get the Ironman achievement and then focused entirely on unlocking the Honest Looting, Memorable Moment, and Apocalypse achievements. None of which turned out to be very straightforward.

The ‘Apocalypse Can Wait’ one is simple enough on paper… you just have to pray the random enemy/item generation works in your favor (I’m about to start the 20th run now and just have to kill the Captor/Captive one more time). ‘A Memorable Moment’ is a bit more complicated. I’m not sure of the exact requirements (like ‘Tricks of Time’ it apparently has an unmentioned perquisite), but it popped for me after dying to the Fallen Priestess when she was the last boss “blocking the path”.

‘Honest Looting’ caused some trouble at first since there’s apparently little to no useful information around regarding its requirements. As it turns out, it requires killing an exorbitant number of bosses/mini-bosses. At the start of this 20th run I’ve killed 77. You can check your own progress by extracting the player.json file from your save, opening it with a text editor, and searching for “vendor”.

While playing on Normal difficulty my best was 60 floors (this was before I understood how the vendor inventories expanded), worst was 10 floors (damn elementals), and over the course of this odyssey I’ve experimented with quite a number of different character builds. Some notes:

– Kineticist’s Kinetic Blade works with Vital Strike to bypass the Gather Power charge time (but doesn’t do extra damage)
– Kinetic Blade doesn’t work with Attacks of Opportunity or Cleaving Finish (but does with Cleave)
– Magus Spell Combat works with Flurry of Blows and Kinetic Blade
– Sword Saint works with polymorph if you specialize in a relevant natural weapon
– Sword Saint works with any Motherless Tiefling or Dragon Disciple build if you pick Bite as your weapon
– Sensei’s Wisdom attack bonus works when armored
– Sneak Attack ranged users are insanely good here thanks to the confined quarters (Grenadiers as well)
– You can dual-wield throwing weapons with Two-Weapon Fighting for tons of attacks
– There’s no need for a healer due to the abundance of potions
– Browse the vendor stock before deciding on what team to use for a run
– Try to avoid buff-intensive builds; yes you can rest frequently, but re-buffing every floor is time-consuming
– Past the 30th floor golems (Greater Autumn & Golden) and Wild Hunt (Monarchs) become prohibitively annoying
– Before the 30th floor never underestimate elmentals
– Kill any Geokineticists you come across quickly
– Stinking Cloud is a godsend against the Fallen Priestess and Wicked Chanter
– Secret areas can spawn in a floor’s first room
– It’s often possible to use Stealth to get through a floor with a solo character

The Wildcards is the most obviously useful of the three purchasable DLC for Pathfinder: Kingmaker. It adds a new race, class, and two new companions to the main campaign (though only one can be used at a time until the endgame). The Kineticist is a lot like D&D’s Warlock (except instead of having a neutral energy blast they focus on a specific element or elemental combination), and just like that class they start out weak only to become ludicrously powerful at higher levels.

The race and class additions are worthwhile of course, but the companions on the other hand don’t seem particularly well-integrated. It’s also worth noting that the associated companion quests are much more heavily scripted than anything in the base game… which can be either novel or annoying depending on your point of view.

The next DLC at first glance looks like it’s a stand-alone side story (which resulted in my ignoring it until recently). While that’s mostly true, it turns out that your choices there can both change a few things and add a small area to explore in the main campaign. The new campaign is quite a bit different from the main one both in that it’s linear (world map travel is automated) and there’s no time limit (so you can rest as much as you want). It starts you off at level 5 and you’ll reach level 9 somewhere in the final area after about 7 or so hours of playtime; there are three small areas and three large areas not including Varnhold itself.

I played through it once with Neoseeker’s suggested party and didn’t have any trouble (although I’m not sold on the Freebooter). There doesn’t seem to be much reason to play through it more than once or twice due to the linearity, though there actually are a surprisingly large number of choices to be made which can affect how things end.

The third and currently final DLC is both a stand alone and fully integrated with the main campaign. The campaign version is static, bizarrely laid out, doesn’t have much worthwhile loot, has a ludicrous final boss fight, and overall in general isn’t worth bothering with. The stand-alone version meanwhile is almost a separate game: You create a new character and explore an effectively endless number of randomized levels (which is similar in structure to Diablo, down to there being Shrines to activate). There’s no story to speak of here, just killing and looting and unlocking new equipment/bonuses for future playthroughs. So it’s the perfect place to play around with all sorts of different builds if you like the game’s combat system but couldn’t stand the kingdom building or time limit aspects.

I’m on floor 11 at the moment with a Scaled Fist-Eldritch Scion-Paladin, Thug-Aldori Defender-Swordlord-Duelist, Barbarian-Cleric of Gorum, Archaeologist-Vivisectionist-Arcane Trickster, Monk-Tactical Leader (this was supposed to be a Blight Druid… but I messed up the alignment), and a Psychokineticist. The progression so far is a hell of a lot better than the main campaign’s version of the dungeon and I love the randomized loot. So I may end up playing this mode more than the main campaign (of which 2 more playthroughs are planned to grab some more achievements; I started putting together Kingdom Building and Exploration guides to assist in this).

So, surprisingly enough, all three DLC can end up being worth buying depending on which parts of the game you enjoy.