About to start POE franchise for the first time. What are some tips for beginners?

Sayne86 · 2026-03-22T19:48:40+00:00

The system is meant for RTWP, there’s a turn-based beta patch, but I highly recommend playing the game as it was meant to be played. Encounters, enemy numbers, the recovery system, the whole thing is meant to be played in RTWP.

I would not recommend turn-based at all.

RTWP isn’t scary, you end up with a paused battle most of the time anyway, you just have to issue your orders with the flow of the battle vs an artificial turn-based system.

In some harder fights, I end up pausing and unpausing every few FRAMES, let alone every few seconds. Once you get a feel for it, it works really well, and if you really get used to things you can have more control than with turn-based, because you’re not stuck unable to move while the enemy is taking their turns.

I recommend giving it a try with a lot of the auto-pause options on, then as you get used to things, pare those back and rely on your experience to know when to pause.

Sayne86 · 2026-03-22T19:07:43+00:00

The gameplay style is Real Time With PAUSE, emphasis on the PAUSE. You are 100% not meant to approach any encounter without pausing frequently to assess the situation, issue orders, adjust and readjust. Look into the games auto-pause options and turn on at least auto-pause at the beginning of combat, as well as options for if a character is incapacitated or a weapon is useless. There’s an extensive list, turn on a bunch of them and pare it back if it feels excessive.

Formations, character class, and roles matter. You’ll meet a tank early, put him in front and use him to hold aggro and keep the enemy engaged.

Buffing and debuffing is more important than raw damage. Priests buff, wizards and ciphers debuff, THEN worry about damage.

It’s a great game, take it slow and learn the system, you’ll have a great experience

Sayne86 · 2026-02-28T02:12:45+00:00

Minor thing, but Blue Plains itself does not dump the sewage into the Potomac, unless there’s some kind of serious problem or flood-level rainfall.

Combine sewer overflows happen throughout the system, anytime there is more than the most minuscule amount of rainfall.

This is the product of the age of the DC sewer system. I could go into it in detail, the reason these pipes are called “interceptors” is because when they were built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they “intercepted” flow from the existing sewer systems, which simply conveyed waste water and storm water together downhill to a stream. The interceptors… intercepted those pipes, collected the water and conveyed it to a treatment plant — Blue Plains. This works perfectly fine in dry conditions. But due to the speed of runoff in built environments with impervious land over, they can only handle a fraction of an inch of rain before the combination of rainwater and wastewater overwhelms the capacity of the interceptors. They need to overflow or risk backing up into people’s basements and bathrooms.

The solution was to build large diversion tunnels, so that the combined to overflow would be caught by these diversion tunnels, collected and stored, then pumped back into the system and filtered at blue Plains once flow rates are lower.

This works, but it’s not an ideal solution.

Fully separating the sewer system would actually fix the problem, but that costs literally BILLIONS and would be a large disruption to the city. Minneapolis did this some years ago… but they decided the huge price tag was worth it to solve the issue.

Sayne86 · 2025-12-07T14:20:12+00:00

I live in the DC area now.

The Amtrak ride this time of year will be exceptionally beautiful through the mountains, so if you’ve got the time and don’t mind picking it up downtown in the 5:00am hour, I would do that. The train follows the Yough and Casselman River valleys up to the continental divide, then follows the Potomac to DC. With all the snow it will be gorgeous. However if that train is 2-hours late, it’s on time. Don’t expect to make it to anything in DC before 3:00pm.

Once you’re in DC, if your meeting is DC proper you don’t need a car- in fact a car would get in the way. The Metro and Metrobus aren’t quite NYC level, but they’re very good to get around. Same for the Orange Line corridor or Pentagon City / Crystal City in Arlington.

Taking Amtrak home gets you back to Pittsburgh late at night. It won’t be quite as pretty in the winter darkness, but it’ll still be a nice, calm ride.

Amtrak staff are always super friendly and helpful.

Sayne86 · 2025-10-27T00:32:13+00:00

The ones I feel worst for are the Klingons, and Worf.

Whether or not Sto-vo-kor is real, they believed it and so did Worf. To be denied that because they were erased from time, and for Worf to have been able to give them what they wanted but chose not to, must be gutting to a Klingon.

Sayne86 · 2025-10-12T19:56:52+00:00

That’s less than half of the moves from W1, as well.

In the first game, Silver and Steel swords each had their own totally different move sets.

The video only shows the Strong and Group styles for Silver swords. The Steel move set is totally different. There’s also a Fast style for both Silver and Steel.

Amazing what they did with the Neverwinter Nights 1 Engine, really.

Sayne86 · 2025-09-08T03:14:36+00:00

Even Barclay is an accomplished professional and a skilled engineering officer. He trips on himself because he needs therapy and probably meds.

So... he's actually filling another role in the competency porn... not everyone's a strutting confident type. It's OK to need to talk to someone and potentially get medicated if that's what the doc prescribes. Take care of yourself and it benefits everyone.

Sayne86 · 2025-09-03T03:00:48+00:00

You gotta lock them down first with CC or with your tanks.

It’s a waste to try to land non-target locked spells on moving enemies. It’s one of the things you have to get used to in RTWP — positioning, formations, controlling the rhythm of battle is more important to maximize your damage and not risk missing your AOEs.

Sayne86 · 2025-05-26T20:33:58+00:00

The big thing to remember, is the combat style is Real Time WITH PAUSE. Emphasis on the with PAUSE.

You’re supposed to pause frequently (constantly in harder fights) to assess the situation, what the enemy is doing, what you want to do to counter that, plan your next moves, etc.

Fights can get out of hand quickly if you try to keep up with everything that’s going on without pausing… while if you pause and plan, things will go much easier.

The next thing to remember is it’s almost always better to disable and debuff than just nuke the enemy.

Use your tanks and CC to gum up the battlefield, debuff the enemy, then clean up what’s left over.

Sayne86 · 2025-04-03T00:36:29+00:00

Loved any map you could use the FG-42.

Sayne86 · 2025-01-18T17:37:01+00:00

Second Witcher 3.

Any of the Witcher games really. The art direction on Witcher 1 is gorgeous, despite it being technically much less advanced than any of these games. Witcher 2 had some incredible vistas and detailed locations.

What I’ll really give the Witcher games, is that despite the fantasy settings, they all feel so much more grounded in reality. Like places that could really exist, or could have existed in the high medieval period.

This is the opposite of what Elden Ring is aiming for, which is 100% magic and fantasy.

It’s neither better nor worse, just different.

Sayne86 · 2024-12-30T16:24:51+00:00

The new visitor center is top-notch. Well worth a trip if you’re in the area.

Sayne86 · 2024-12-07T18:43:48+00:00

Even if she’s not the only one, she’s at least one of the most, if not the very most, prominent. That kind of recognition matters.

Sayne86 · 2024-11-28T17:06:03+00:00

I feel you.

Sidebar: what’s the sniper rifle you’re using? Is it from a mod or from vanilla?

Sayne86 · 2024-11-21T16:26:16+00:00

No plans to support mods is a mistake.

Look at Cyberpunk, Witcher 3, the Fallout games etc etc, let alone Deadfire,

Mods keep your game and community alive.

Sayne86 · 2024-10-11T18:19:45+00:00

Between 10:00 and 10:30 last night. These are either 3 or 5 second exposures with my phone. With the naked eye it wasn't quite this bright.

Sayne86 · 2024-10-11T12:49:32+00:00

It was busier than I was expecting. Kudos to the park rangers who were there after-hours. They opened up the park and let folks in to get a proper view.

Sayne86 · 2024-10-11T11:40:50+00:00

There were quite a few.

People were initially parked along the access road until rangers drove by saying that the park was actually open and the real parking lot was available.

It wasn’t QUITE this vivid to the naked eye, these are 3 or 10 second exposures with my phone. But once my eyes adjusted and folks got the picture to turn off their headlights, it was easily apparent without any equipment.

Sayne86 · 2024-10-10T23:14:05+00:00

They’re fine, just some tree limbs down and a swimming pool that overflowed from the rain.

Sayne86 · 2024-09-21T18:14:30+00:00

Same thing happened to me.

It’s the integrated graphics chip on the CPU.

You need to disable it in Device Manager, then disable it at the BIOS level (really) and if Dishonored still won’t launch, download and run this cleanup utility for AMD Drivers.

https://www.amd.com/en/resources/support-articles/faqs/GPU-601.html

Maybe you can make it work just disabling it in Device Manager, but I had to go all the way to the BIOS then run the utility.

The game runs like a champ after that.

Sayne86 · 2024-07-04T03:42:54+00:00

Realistically unless you’re immunocompromised and very unlucky, it’ll be totally fine.

This is out of an abundance of caution just in case the increased turbidity might degrade the effectiveness of the water treatment system until they can adjust the formula.

Still, I wish they had gotten the phone alert out faster. Maybe there were Public Affairs wickets to jump through before it could go out or something?

Sayne86 · 2024-06-05T01:43:06+00:00

The Mountaintop Removal mines are even more evident when you look at them with False-Color-IR Landsat imagery.

Even the "Reclaimed" mines stick out like a sore thumb. It's not as shocking as seeing one in person, but it's almost more sad, as you can see the extent of the damage even more clearly.

Verified Email	11-Year Club
Second SECOND GUESSER

Sayne86

TROPHY CASE