Introduction

Introduction

Pathfinder Kingmaker is a CRPG (computer role-playing game) which uses the Pathfinder ruleset and tells the story of your attempts to establish a foothold in a notoriously ungovernable territory called the Stolen Lands. Pathfinder is a fork of AD&D 3.5 so if you've played Neverwinter Nights or its sequel, the rules will be mostly familiar. In terms of role-playing, Kingmaker is best-in-class. It is perhaps the deepest and longest game of its type ever made, easily beating the likes of Baldur's Gate 2 or Neverwinter Nights 2. For a debut release from a previously unknown studio, the scope and execution are admirable. In addition, the writing and localisation are better than we had any right to expect and the plot is actually good - a lengthy story, well told.

As a game, however, Kingmaker is rough. Part of this is down to software bugs, exposing a problem with the Kickstarter funding model where additional funding goes towards adding features rather than improving stability. The upshot is that a small team with limited QA resources simply bit off more than it could chew. The situation at the time of writing (mid-2021) is a lot better than closer to the release of the console ports when the studio took the refreshingly honest step of recommending that people didn't play the game. Nonetheless, I still encountered a fair number of issues, albeit nothing game-breaking (or at least nothing that reloading a save couldn't fix). The game is also built using the Unity engine so expect lots of crashes to take you out of the moment.

Bugs aside, the game is frustrating by design. Someone at Owlcat studios had the smart idea that every object in the game world - every piece of mundane equipment that the thousands of enemies drop, every single one of the tens of thousands of pieces of vendor trash found in loot containers - should be a persistent part of the game state and recorded in your save file. This means that already lengthy load times increase the further into the game you go. By act 6 or 7, area transitions take long enough to make a cup of tea. A crash takes several minutes of watching progress bars to recover from. A "quick save" ends up taking a minute or more. An all-too-frequent interaction goes like this: a companion asks to speak to you in your throne room. When you speak to them, they ask you to come and find them in the tavern. That's three or more loading screens right there. The depth and intricacy of the game rewards your patience but forewarned is forearmed: you will need deep reserves.

The Walkthrough

This is a big walkthrough for a big game. Here's an overview of each section:

Introduction
This section gives an overview of the game rules and tips for playing the game. There is also an overview of the game's trophies.

Character Creation
Character creation in Kingmaker is not only deep but actually overwhelming - the character creation screen asks you to make choices while failing to give you sufficient information to make informed ones. This section fills in that missing information: details on race, abilities, skills, feats, all sixteen classes and forty eight subclasses. If you can't be bothered to go through it all, there are some builds that you can follow.

Companions
By-and-large, companions in this game follow the Bioware model: they are needy, have lots of baggage and expect you to sort out their problems. To avoid spoilers from simply reading the introductory pages, this section does not contain details of the many, many companion quests. Instead, it gives character overviews and build suggestions.

Prologue ... Act 8
This is the walkthrough proper in ten parts. It is aimed at Normal / Challenging difficulty and tries to give you an optimum path through the game while covering everything. Be aware that it is also a nice walkthrough; while you can be a complete dick to everyone, this will cause you to miss out on a huge amount of content and a walkthrough that missed out a huge amount of content wouldn't be a very good one. It leads you towards the most favourable choices and also leads you to the hidden, canonical ending (look out for "So Shall You Reap" callouts).

Beneath the Stolen Lands
This was originally a piece of DLC and adds a dungeon crawl to what is already a long game. While Kingmaker is a diamond in the rough, I'm afraid that Beneath the Stolen Lands is more of a turd in a paddling pool: sixteen floors of rooms and monsters with nothing but the flimsiest, most heavily telegraphed excuse for a story to give it a point. Since I'm writing a walkthrough, I played it but I certainly wouldn't do so again.

Companion Quests
Companion quests are actually inlined in the walkthrough, but if you're looking for a specific quest, they're also documented in this section.

Miscellaneous Quests
This short section documents a couple of quests that, for one reason or another, couldn't be inlined in the main walkthrough. The section is incomplete since there are eight short, one-per-playthrough "alignment" quests and I'm damned if I'm going to play the game eight times to see them all!

Miscellaneous Locations
There is a world map with lots of locations to visit. This section is a region-by-region gazetteer of the various locations that you do not visit while playing the main quest. The main walkthrough points out the locations that you pass and provides hyperlinks to the detailed coverage in this section.

Errands
There are sidequests so minor that they're not even called sidequests. They are only really a part of the early game. You will complete most of them simply by following the walkthrough but they are also listed in this section for reference purposes.

Artisans
As you expand your realm, you will employ a number of artisans who give you cool stuff. This section gives an overview of each artisan, what they will make for you and outlines of their quests. This is for reference purposes since the artisan quests are covered in detail at the relevant points in the main walkthrough.

Items
The game rewards you with lots of cool loot. This section details what you can find and where you can find it.

Kingdom Management
There is a game within a game: managing the territory that you govern. This section covers all aspects of that part of the game: employing advisors, completing projects and research, solving crises and building settlements. Apologies in advance for the table-heavy nature of it all.

Appendices
Stuff that didn't fit elsewhere. It is intended to answer questions like "what are all the alignment-locked choices in the game?" and "how high do my skills need to be?".

Trophies
An overview of the game's trophies / achievements.

Related Walkthroughs

If you can't get enough Pathfinder, I have written a walkthrough for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/324475-pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous/faqs/80843

Rules

Attack Bonus vs. Armor Class

To attempt to hit an opponent, you roll 1d20 and add your Attack Bonus (AB). Your Base Attack Bonus (BAB) depends on your class and level and ranges from 0 to +20 (for, say, a 20th level Fighter). You add any attack modifiers to your BAB to calculate your overall AB. Sources of attack bonuses include:

• Strength: +1 for every 2 points above 10 (values of 9 and below reduce your attack modifier) when attacking with melee weapons
• Dexterity: replaces Strength for ranged attacks and certain weapons if you take the Weapon Finesse feat
• Flanking: +2
• Enchantment bonus such as from a +1 weapon
• Feats such as (Greater) Weapon Focus and Point Blank Shot
• Morale bonus, e.g. from drinking a Potion of Heroism
• Other bonuses, such as luck, competence and so forth.

The total is checked against the opponent's Armor Class (AC). If the modified die roll is >= AC, you hit and damage is calculated. That's not quite true; a 1 is always a miss regardless of AB and a 20 is always a hit (and may be a critical hit) regardless of AC.

AC is not as simple as it should be. There are multiple sources of AC:

• Base (10)
• Dodge bonuses from attribute modifiers (typically Dexterity but possibly Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma) and feats
• Size (+1 for gnomes and halflings)
• Actual armour (light, medium or heavy)
• Shields (or shield AC from feats)
• Natural bonuses (from, for example, Snakeskin due to a Serpentine bloodline)
• Deflection bonuses (from, for example, a Ring of Protection)
• Maluses from negative statuses such as cowering.

Something important to note is that most bonuses of the same type do not stack (that is, two Rings of Protection won't give you twice the bonus). The exception is dodge AC but only when it comes from different sources - for example, the Duelist class which adds both a Dexterity modifier and Intelligence modifier to dodge AC. And presumably combines it with +1 AC from the Dodge feat.

The full lowdown on what does and doesn't stack is discussed in this post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/9qvr4o/an_explanation_of_what_bonuses_and_penalties_stack/

There are also three different types of AC: full AC, flat-footed AC (where you cannot dodge out of the way) and touch AC (where the fact that you're wearing chainmail is irrelevant). The following table shows which AC types are included in the AC calculation:

If most of your AC comes from dodge AC (i.e. most Dexterity builds), you can lose the lot from being caught flat-footed. The principal cause of being caught flat-footed is losing initiative at the start of combat - if you are attacked before your turn starts you will lose all dodge bonuses. Feats like Improved Initiative and class abilities like Uncanny Dodge can help here. If most of your armour comes from armour and shield, you are in danger from touch attacks from enemy casters.

Flanking

If two creatures are attacking the same opponent, that opponent is flanked and its attackers gain +2 to their attack rolls. If both attackers have the Outflank teamwork feat, the bonus increases to +4.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is not a forgiving game when it comes to AC. It's either really high or it may as well be nothing at all. An alternative way to avoid being hit is concealment, which is provided by a number of spells, including Blur, Mirror Image and Displacement.

Damage

To calculate damage, the following modifiers are added:

• The wielder's Strength bonus (or Dexterity with the right feats)
• The weapon's enchantment bonus
• Any bonus from feats like Weapon Specialization
• Any bonus from modal abilities such as Power Attack.

This is calculated separately since it feeds into critical hit calculations. Then other damage sources such as sneak attack dice and elemental properties of the weapon are added to come up with an overall total.

Critical Hits

When your attack hits and the unmodified die roll is within the critical threat range of the weapon being used, the hit may be a critical hit. The critical threat range is typically 20 or 19-20. Note that if a roll is high enough to be within the critical range but not high enough to hit, it is still a miss. For example, a 2nd level Fighter with 18 Strength (AB +6) is attacking a tough opponent with 25 AC using a scimitar which has a critical threat range of 18-20. If he rolls 18, it is a miss. If he rolls 19, it may be a critical hit. There is a feat called Improved Critical which will double the threat range of a single weapon, such as the scimitar in the example.

If a hit may be a critical hit, a second roll is made at +6. If that is also a hit, the critical hit is confirmed and damage is calculated. The base damage (see above) is multiplied by the weapon's critical hit multiplier which ranges from x2 (for most weapons) to x4 (for a scythe or a pick). Certain class abilities may increase the multiplier for a certain weapon type and the Critical Focus feat allows you to add +4 to the confirmation roll.

Some enemies - notably oozes and elementals - don't have any vital areas to target and are immune to critical hits (and sneak attacks). However, these are relatively rare so building a character around the ability to inflict frequent and powerful critical hits is a valid choice.

Damage Reduction

Armour and class abilities can reduce incoming damage per hit (not dice rolled). Damage reduction is expressed as x/Y where "x" is the amount of damage reduction and "Y" is a vulnerability so that 3/silver applies reduced damage per hit unless the hit comes from a silver (or rather, mithral) weapon. 3/- would mean that the reduction is applied unconditionally.

Vulnerabilities are as follows:

• Slashing / Blunt / Piercing: overcome by weapons that do the specified damage type.
• Magic: overcome by any +1 weapon or better
• Silver: overcome by mithral weapons (and +3 weapons or better)
• Cold iron: overcome by cold iron weapons (and +3 weapons or better)
• Adamantine: overcome by adamantine weapons (and +4 weapons or better)
• Good / Evil / Law / Chaos: overcome by holy / unholy / axiomatic / anarchic weapons (and +5 weapons or better).

Damage reduction does not stack - the highest reduction is applied instead. If you have multiple types of reduction, the lesser reduction is checked if the greater one is bypassed. An exception is the Stalwart Defender prestige class whose class-based DR (5/- at level 10) stacks with any reduction obtained from armour.

Be aware that in most cases, not getting hit in the first place is better than damage reduction when hit. It is better to build for high AC than high DR.

Attacks of Opportunity

A combatant threatens an area around him. Certain actions by an enemy in the threatened area leave that enemy open to attacks of opportunity (AOO). These include:

• Attacking with a ranged weapon
• Attacking unarmed (unless you have the Improved Unarmed Combat feat)
• Casting most spells, drinking a potion, using a scroll
• Moving into or out of the threatened area
• Getting up after being knocked down.

Certain teamwork feats will allow attacks of opportunity under other circumstances. Typically, you can make one such attack per round, although there is a (recommended) feat called Combat Reflexes which allows you to make a number of such attacks equal to your Dexterity Modifier.

Most AOOs can be avoided by the "don't do that" principle: ranged attackers should not be using ranged attacks at melee range in the first place. Spellcasters can avoid such attacks if they succeed in a Concentration check (or by casting a Quickened spell).

Movement is more problematic since you will typically want to take out the Wizard standing behind the guys with the pointy sticks. You can move 5' without provoking an AOO or you can invest points in the Mobility skill so that you pass the necessary Mobility checks to avoid provoking them.

Both the Concentration and Mobility checks have a base DC (see below) of 15. Certain feats or class abilities can give you bonuses when making them.

Difficulty Checks

Succeeding in skill checks or shrugging off the effects of magic require you to pass a check against a Difficulty Class (DC). Roll a d20, add any modifiers, and check the total against the DC. The modifier might be your Persuasion skill if you're trying to bring someone round to your way of thinking or your Will Save if you are trying to shrug off an enemy Wizard's Dominate Person spell.

Spell Combat

Some spells require you to make a hit roll before any other factors come into play. Typically, these will target touch AC.

When spells are subject to spell resistance, the caster must overcome the target's Spell Resistance (SR) if any. His caster level (i.e. the number of character levels in classes with level progression in the type of magic being cast) is added to a d20 roll. If this roll is less than the target's SR, the spell fizzles. Spell Penetration feats and certain racial traits and bloodline abilities can increase your effective caster level for the purposes of overcoming Spell Resistance.

Spell resistance is applied to most beneficial magic when cast on allies. This means that spell resistance on your party members (acquired through the Spell Resistance buff or a Monk's innate spell resistance) may end up doing more harm than good.

Spells which allow a saving throw have a DC of 10 + spell level + the caster's attribute modifier (Intelligence / Wisdom / Charisma). Spell-like effects usually use caster level / 2 in place of spell level. Spell level can be increased by metamagic (and Heighten Spell only increases spell level) and the DC can be increased by (Greater) Magic Focus as well as certain racial traits and bloodline abilities.

Overcoming the DC requires a d20 modified by the relevant saving throw and attribute bonuses:

• Fortitude save + Constitution bonus
• Reflex save + Dexterity bonus
• Will save + Wisdom bonus.

Note that the consequences of failing Fortitude and Will saves (dead or controlled) are often worse than the consequences of failing Reflex saves.

Non-Lethal Combat

Not all combat actions are attempts to kill your opponent. With the right training, you can attempt to bring your opponent to the ground or knock his weapon out of his hand. In game, these are called Combat Maneuvers and to succeed you add your Combat Maneuver Bonus (CMB) to a d20 roll in attempt to overcome your opponent's Combat Maneuver Defense (CMD).

Your CMB is your BAB + Strength modifier + Size modifier (large creatures get a bonus, small creatures receive a penalty). Your CMD is your BAB + Strength and Dexterity modifiers + Size modifiers + Dodge bonuses. The Agile Maneuvers feat allows you to use your Dexterity modifier to calculate CMB while the Defensive Combat Training feat allows you to use your character level in place of BAB to calculate CMD.

Size

Most character races are medium-sized apart from gnomes and halflings which are small. Size comes with various bonuses and penalties, shown in the following table:

You can change a character's size category using the Enlarge Person / Reduce Person spells. Forms assumed by a Druid's Wildshape ability or certain magic spells can be huge. Weapons wielded by small characters do slightly less damage while those wielded by large creatures do somewhat more. Reach is the radius that the character threatens. If you equip a weapon with "reach", your reach doubles. An optimum strategy for your two-handed weapon fighter is to cast Enlarge Person on them and stand them well behind your frontline.

Size Damage Modifiers

The following table shows how damage dice are modified by a character's size. The Medium column is the baseline value.

There are oversized weapons which inflict an attack penalty but do damage as though you were one size larger. The Lead Blades spell increases the effective size category for melee weapons while the Hurricane Bow spell does the same for missile weapons.

Conditions

A creature may be affected by a number of status conditions. They are:

• Blinded
  You suffer -2 AC penalty, lose your Dexterity bonus and take -4 penalties to Strength and Dexterity based skill checks and Perception checks.
• Confused
  You only have a 1-in-4 chance of acting normally. Otherwise, you might do nothing, attack the nearest creature or hurt yourself.
• Cowering
  You suffer a -2 AC penalty and lose your Dexterity bonus.
• Dazed
  You are unable to act.
• Dazzled
  You take a -1 to your attack rolls and Perception checks.
• Entangled
  You suffer a -2 AC penalty and -4 Dexterity. You move at half speed and cannot charge. Spellcasting requires a DC 15 Concentration check.
• Exhausted
  You move at half speed and cannot charge. You suffer -6 penalties to Strength and Dexterity. After an hour's rest, your condition changes to fatigued.
• Fatigued
  You cannot charge and suffer -2 penalties to Strength and Dexterity. Anything that would leave you fatigued leaves you exhausted.
• Frightened
  You attempt to flee. If unable to do so, you take a -2 penalty on all rolls.
• Grappled
  You cannot move and take a -4 penalty to Dexterity. You take a -2 penalty to all rolls except those related to grappling.
• Nauseated
  You can make one move action per turn but cannot do anything else.
• Panicked
  You drop everything and try to get as far away from the source of your fear as possible. This is worse than merely frightened.
• Shaken
  You take a -2 penalty on attack rolls, saving throws and skill checks.
• Sickened
  You take a -2 penalty to all rolls.
• Staggered
  You may take a move action or a standard action but not both. You may not take full-round actions.

Calendar

Pathfinder Kingmaker uses the Gregorian Calendar but the months have silly names. This becomes an issue for the kingdom management part of the game when you may want to know how many days are remaining in the month.

There is also a quest which requires you to know which day is "Moonday". The sequence of days is as follows:

Tips

General Tips

I advise you to use turn-based combat rather than real time with pause (RTWP). Kingmaker is a mechanically complex game and real time combat is too hectic to keep up with. Use R3 to toggle between modes.

Do not depend on autosaves since they are volatile and can be overwritten at any time (e.g. by a random encounter when travelling). Use saves and quicksaves instead. Just about to rest? Quicksave. Rest went well? Quicksave. Forgot to apply a crucial buff? Load your quicksave, apply it and quicksave again. There is so much to remember and it is so easy to screw up that I recommend you become an obsessive save-scummer. Go into settings and enable multiple quick saves (three or four). However, I suggest that you turn off auto-saves altogether. The reason is that the game auto-saves on every area transition when they're enabled. Slow saving combines destructively with slow loading for an awful player experience.

Quick save before leaving or entering an area or bringing up the Kingdom Management screen. This is when the game is most likely to crash.

Unless you're going for the Unfair difficulty trophy, I suggest that you enable the "Remove negative effects on rest" difficulty option. Permanent ability damage is one of the many ways the game is annoying by design and is tedious and time consuming to put right (fiddle with spellbooks, rest, cast spells, fiddle with spellbooks, rest). Since playing should be fun, I advise you to opt out of this mechanic.

There is a bug (or at least a UI issue) that prevents you from resting outside some of the game's major dungeons. For example, the Troll Lair and Armag's Tomb are both a long march from your home base and you'll fatigued the first time you visit them. If you rest on the world map, your party members' fatigue will not be removed. There is no apparent reason for this and it's perfectly infuriating. What appears to be required is for you to go inside so that your journal gets updated. Now you can return to the world map and rest successfully.

Like many games in the genre, Kingmaker uses an isometric projection in dungeons and some outdoor maps. In this scheme, the top left corner of the screen is north (not northwest) and directions given are relative to this.

Screenshots in the walkthrough show you where you need to go on the world map but if you want to see the big picture, you can use the complete world map here:
https://preview.redd.it/d5as47qtulq51.jpg?width=5250&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=335d911b4aae7f2b00062215a353af4f3c9c0829

Time optimisation

For most of the game, time is a precious resource. There are a couple of things you can do to make the best use of it.

When travelling across the overland map, don't be afraid to force march your party through fatigue to get to your destination or your home base. Keeping going when fatigued is a great timesaver.

Make sure that you have enough rations to feed your whole party when you camp. If you have to hunt to feed your party, it is likely to more than double the time needed to camp.

When you are in your throne room, you can make time pass using the kingdom management screen. However, you rarely want to do this since there is almost always something better to do even if it's just opening up new paths on the world map or claiming an out-of-the-way kingdom resource.

Character Creation

Your main character should be capable of looking after herself in a fight. There are one or two sections where you are on your own and these can be all but unwinnable with the wrong class choice. Ideally, she should be able to stand on the front line as well because your companions are slightly lacking in that respect. For a first playthrough, I would recommend something like a Slayer, Aldori Defender or Vivisectionist.

Some classes - Magus and Kineticist in particular - are extremely fiddly. This is not such an issue in turn-based mode but if you're using RTWP, I would advise you to steer clear.

Don't create a main character that is redundant with your companions: Ekundayo (archer), Octavia (Arcane Trickster) and Nok-Nok (Knife Master) are all better than a character you could create yourself. If you don't mind playing a simple fighter, one of the premade characters, the fighter Hedwirg, is also better than you could make yourself.

You want your party to be able to cover all skills since they are all important (Use Magic Device is an arguable exception). The one skill you need on your protagonist is Persuasion and you'll want to boost this with gear and feats, particularly if you use Charisma as a dump stat. Since Kingmaker is about more than killing enemies, you may want to leave room in your build for a Skill Focus or something like Persuasive.

Avoid "getting married" to a specific weapon type. Feats like (Greater) Weapon Specialization, Fencing Grace and Slashing Grace and the rogue's Finesse Training tie your character to a specific weapon type and limit your choices: do you use the awesome heavy mace or the not-so-awesome longsword? You do, however, want Weapon Focus to unlock Dazzling Display / Shatter Defenses - you don't have to use the focused weapon to use Dazzling Display.

If you are going to tie yourself to a weapon type (Finesse Training makes this inevitable), pay attention to the loot table. Elven curve blade is a terrible choice - you won't unlock a decent one until you're almost at the end of the game - whereas a rapier or dagger scales fairly well.

Because of poor itemisation, most Exotic Weapon proficiencies are a waste of a feat as well. For example, estocs look good, but the only way you can acquire a good one before the endgame is a lucky artisan drop.

Blind Fight is an essential feat on pretty much any frontline character. It allows you to reroll a miss due to concealment (which is a common enemy buff) and also makes you immune to gaze attacks and the final two acts see you fighting hordes of enemies that use a paralysing gaze attack near-constantly.

There is some mechanical advantage to choosing Lawful Good alignment, particularly if you have Monk levels. However, you will struggle to stay there because of a bug in the alignment system. "(Neutral Good)" choices pull you towards Neutral on the law-chaos axis, instead of leaving it unchanged. Similarly "(Lawful Neutral)" choices pull you towards Neutral on the good-evil axis. This means that if you are a good king, you are liable to lose your paladinhood when your alignment suddenly becomes Neutral Good. You can fix this with an Atonement scroll (3000G) but you may want to avoid building your character around a specific alignment in the first place.

There is a very minor mechanical advantage to playing a female main character: they are not affected by a Nereid's aura.

Magic Tips

One hour of unpaused playing time is one-hour in game. This means that buffs which last for one hour (such as Delay Poison, Communal) or ten minutes / caster level (such as Barkskin) don't really need to be reapplied between rests. On the flip side of the coin, you are unable to dismiss your own disabling spells. If you carpet an area with Web (1 minute / level), waiting ten or more actual minutes before it no longer inconveniences you can get really tiresome.

By-and-large, the only metamagic feat that you want to take is Heighten Metamagic. The other effects can be duplicated by rods that you can find and buy. The prince of combos in this game is Delay Poison + Stinking Cloud and Heighten Metamagic allows you to use Stinking Cloud in spell slots of any level. This also applies to other spells that you want to scale beyond their normal levels - Grease, Slow and so forth. A character dedicated to buffing allies is better off with Extend metamagic, however - 1 minute / level buffs are twice as good when they last two minutes / level.

Have disabling spells targeting all save types: Fortitude (Stinking Cloud), Reflex (Grease / Web) and Will (Slow). Note that you will want to buff your party with the antidotes to these (Delay Poison and Freedom of Movement). Slow is great because it's party-friendly but it's not so great because it's all-or-nothing. Disablers which force a save every round (such as Stinking Cloud) are preferable. Those which allow a fresh save every round to shrug off the effects (such as Hold Person) are not so good. Slow heightened to 8th or 9th level is better than most 8th or 9th level spells.

Enlarge Person is exceptionally powerful for a 1st level spell. It looks as though you're trading Strength for Dexterity and then lose another point of armour class into the bargain due to the size penalty. However, it also gives you extended reach and increases the base damage of your weapons, providing a respectable boost to your lethality. Furthermore, you are more resistant to being tripped which is very useful in the early game when fighting packs of wolves. The upgrades to Enlarge Person - Righteous Might, Legendary Proportions and so forth - are also some of the best spells of their level.

Shield is another good 1st level spell since you'll be a good part of the way through the game before you start finding better shields. In the spellbook of an Alchemist, this becomes even better because it can be cast on other party members, including animal companions.

Buffs which level scale (such as Shield of Faith and Barkskin) can replace gear. You do not need an Amulet of Natural Armor if Barkskin is giving you an equivalent or better bonus for hours at a time.

Most summoning spells suck. You spend a whole round summoning a weaksauce ally rather than using that time to damage enemies or boost allies. Animate Dead is much better than all but the highest levels of Summon Monster (or Nature's Ally). When you acquire this spell, the summoned help are more powerful than you and most enemies and it remains useful until near the end of the game.

When fighting enemies that use elemental attacks, Resist Element is generally more useful than Protection from Element. Most attacks are frequent and low damage (such as WIll-o'-wisps or enemy alchemists) and Resist Element neutralises these. However, if you're facing a dragon-like creature, Protection from Element is what you want.

Concealment is an annoying enemy buff which causes your attacks to miss. True Seeing, which is the spell that you would expect to work against this, doesn't work in the majority of cases. It does work against Mirror Image cast by an enemy mage, but this is a rare event and one you can prepare for ahead of time. The spell you actually want is Echolocation and you'll want to fill an Alchemist's level 4 slots with it.

Other supposedly useful spells which appear to not do very much include:

• See Invisibility: doesn't dispel invisibility; use Glitterdust instead
• Joyful Rapture: doesn't appear to have any effect at all.

Status Effects

It is advantageous to know what status effects enemies will use against you and how to counter them.

• Poison
  Common but easy to counter - simply use the 2nd level spell Delay Poison.
• Fear
  Common and surprisingly difficult to counter. There are several ways to gain bonuses to your saves (such as the Bard's Inspire Courage). A 3rd-level Paladin is immune and the 2nd-level Paladin spell Aura of Greater Courage extends this immunity to the party. A 1st-level spell, Remove Fear, will suppress the effect. The 6th-level Mage spell Greater Heroism confers immunity and the 9th level spell Heroic Invocation confers immunity to the whole party.
• Confusion
  Common and all but impossible to counter until lategame. A 1st-level spell, Unbreakable Heart, will suppress the effect. A rogue can take a Focusing Attack talent which will remove the condition if he makes a sneak attack. The 8th-level Cleric spells Cloak of Chaos / Holy Aura / Shield of Law / Unholy Aura protect against this and all other mind-affecting spells and effects. Finally, there are two pieces of gear which grant immunity: the Ring of Law and the Charred Mantle.
• Paralysis / Slow
  Common and easy to counter. Freedom of Movement is a 4th-level Cleric spell and lasts for ages.
• Disease
  The only enemies that really use disease attacks are Ghostly Mage Guards who hit you with Plague Storm at the first opportunity. By the time you encounter these, you should have access to Mass Heal scrolls.
• Insanity
  This is a permanent confusion effect and very nasty. Fortunately, it's also rare since it's one of the effects inflicted by the Prismatic Spray spell used by a handful of enemies (Golden Golem and Ankou). The only cure is Greater Restoration or Mass Heal.
• Level Drain
  This is only really an issue in two mid-game dungeons. It is countered by the 4th-level Cleric spell Death Ward.
• Ability Damage
  All too common and really annoying. As far as I can tell the only way to prevent this is the 9th-level Mage spell Fiery Body. You can cure this slowly with Restoration or all at once with Greater Restoration / Mass Heal.
• Petrification
  This is inflicted by Medusas which are (fortunately) encountered only in a handful of areas. Prevention is the Blind Fight feat which confers immunity to gaze attacks while cure is the 6th-level Mage spell Stone to Flesh.

Unfair Difficulty

This is the hardest difficulty and comes with a trophy. Basically:

• Enemies receive a flat +8 to all attributes (i.e. +4 to attack rolls, damage dice, spell DC, saving throws)
• Enemies receive +4 AC (+8 AC with the attribute boost)
• Enemy hits do double-damage (+8 due to the attribute boost).

This is not a well done "insanity" difficulty since the difficulty is mostly front-loaded to the early game (i.e. a bandit with +8 to all attributes is many times more dangerous than a normal-difficulty bandit while a Jabberwock with +8 to all attributes is somewhat more dangerous than a normal-difficulty Jabberwock) and there is no new game+ facility so you are forced to go up against those lethal bandits and wolves with a level 1 character.

Personally, I think that this simply makes what is already a somewhat frustrating game more frustrating, but here are some tips:

• Fiddle with the XP sharing option (only turning it on when you are about to recruit someone) to accelerate the levelling of your main character so that you can access essential spells like Delay Poison (Communal), Animate Dead and Stinking Cloud as soon as possible
• Use optimised mercenaries to fill party roles rather than substandard companions
• Pick your fights - much of the game's content is optional. You can skip the entire final chapter and avoid the final boss fight of the penultimate chapter if you're smart.

Trophies

At the time of writing (late 2021), PSN Profiles shows that a grand total of nine people have unlocked the Platinum trophy which means that you're probably not going to join them. Besides the trophies for the game's rogue-like add-on, the difficulty-related trophies (Forged in Blood and Slayer of Bears) are significant roadblocks. Apart from those, you can unlock every other trophy in a single playthrough on normal difficulty. Note the following:

• Play a Chaotic Good main character to unlock Foes No More. Even better, start off as Chaotic Neutral for a better path through Act 1 and gradually shift your alignment.
• Although there is a trophy for completing a romance, avoid romancing a companion. You will still unlock the trophy but won't lock yourself out of the secret ending.
• A male PC may be a requirement for the secret ending (I unlocked it with a male PC but not with a female PC when playtesting the walkthrough).
• Take a female protagonist through the Varnhold's Lot add-on so that you can unlock The Road Goes Ever On.
• Admirer of Finer Things has a certain element of luck but you can make it more likely to unlock by ranking up your advisors.
• Sinmarket Best Customer requires you to spend 1.7 million gold. However, this is towards the end of the game by which time you will not be short of money.

The walkthrough directs you towards trophies at the relevant moments. However, be on the lookout for trophy-related callouts since some trophies require you to take specific actions at certain points in the game. An extreme case is So Shall You Reap which you start working your way towards at the beginning of Act 1 but which unlocks at the very end of the game.

Copyright and Acknowledgments

Copyright 2021 Christopher Williams

This guide may not be reproduced without my express permission for anything other than personal use. Use of this guide on any site where permission to use has not been sought and given is a violation of copyright and forbidden. Permission to use is extended to www.gamefaqs.com.

Walkthroughs and strategies are my own original work and taken from my own playthrough. I took advantage of a number of Internet sources for reference material.

I used the following site as a Pathfinder rules reference:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/

Statistics for summoned creatures were taken from:
https://gameplay.tips/guides/7628-pathfinder-kingmaker.html

I used the following Reddit post to solve the Golden Golem Puzzle:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/9r3qd1/psa_golden_golem_riddle_solution_in_irovettis/

GameFAQs user Jodokast has pointed out a number of Perception checks that I didn't notice while playing the game. Another GameFAQs user, excusemewhat, pointed out that I had missed out on a number of bonuses in the Recipes section. Reddit user u/Ok_Communication6291 has pointed out several errors and lapses.

Corrections and clarifications are welcomed. Please contact me at c.c.williams at hotmail dot com.