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Juggling through reading some heavy in-depth technical reports for work, with appropriate breaks to do some leatherworking as I craft this birthday present for a friend...

I have played all of those combinations (except instead of Assassin/vanilla Wizard it was a /Bloodmage and another time an /Illusionist). --- The best trick for the Assassin/Wizard is to use Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure and then cast super accurate debuff and disabling spells before finishing with a big damage spell. Because Arkemyr's BD gives you invisibility that doesn't break - unless you deal damage - you can cast all sorts of CC/debuff spells while staying invisible. To stay more true to the Assassin theme you can also try to do backstabs with Concelhaut's Draining Touch (highest base dmg weapon in the game) from invisibility - but it's fiddly business... --- Assassin/Bleak Walker (or any Paladin subclass) can be nice because you can stack 3 "neverending" damage-over-time effects: True Love's Kiss (from the Dagger Lover's Embrace) + Gouging Strike + Brand Enemy. From stealth you will use Gouging Strike with the Dagger, get Assassinate's 25 bonus accuracy, combined with the +5 accuracy from Daggers and +12 accuracy from one handed use. Very difficult to miss that one. Since attacks from stealth have -85% recovery time you can immediately follow up with Brand Enemy which his an auto-hit (so it cannot miss). You can then turn invisible and hide and wait until the enemy dies. This works with almost every enemy in the game, so it's a great tactic for solo. For a whole party imo an Assassin/Break Walker will become too boring if you just stick to that. But if you lean into the support role a little more and just take out the nastiest enemies of an encounter it can still be fun. --- SC Assassin can be very good if you use Vanishing Strikes (the invisibility of it doesn't break at all) and pair it with Gambit. For this to work really nicely you need as much INT as you can as well as items and consumables that prolong benefical effects. Because Vanishing Strike's invisibility is short you want to boost it as much as possible. It also scales with Power Level, so make sure to take Prestige. You also want to be very fast to be able to squeeze as many Gambit attacks into the invisibility phase as you can in order to profit from Assassinate and Backstab. Which needs high DEX. High accuracy and therefore PER is also good because you want to crit a lot (see Gambit refund). A very fast setup is dual daggers with Pukestabber and Lover's Embrace under the influence of Alkohol (as resting food). Combine with Aegor's Swift Touch and that hood I forgot the name of and other gear that grants either action speed or recovery time cuts. An armor like Miscreant's Leather in combination with a pet like Abraham can be faster than no armor. When all is set up you will have a very rogue-like char with powerful single target damage. Perfectly suited to hunt down certain "high priority targets" and neutralize them quickly.

First of all: what is grok/grokking? Edit: nevermind, googled it. Some things work exactly that same as in PoE, some don't. If you want to know what's going on I recommend reading @thelee's GameFAQ for Deadfire. It's in-depth but still brief enough and well-structured with lots of details that you would only grasp after hundreds of hours of playtime otherwise: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599 Imo: the main thing to know about is Armor vs. Penetration. In order to truly understand how important this is, take a look at the part where the math behind underpenetration (and any other dmg malus) is explained. --- Casters like Wizards, Druids and Priests still have a development curve where in the early game they have very little options per fight - but tend to collect an big pile of impactful spells/abilities the further the level progression advances. Like in PoE, but less pressure on balance because in general they can't cast 4 very strong spells per tier/rest which would make short work of even the tougher enemies. Instead they can cast 2 (less impactful) spells per tier per encounter. I think that made the encounter design a lot easier. Classes are more balanced than in PoE and there's a ton of great viable option with whatever class combo. Building a party like you described is still very much possible. One character that immediately comes to mind when reading your description is "Herald" (Paladin/Chanter). The things that are different from PoE and which one should really grasp imo: - PEN vs. AR (very different comp. to PoE). Both very important stats, maybe the most important besides accuracy and defense. - bonus and malus calculation (see "double inversion" - bonuses are the same as in PoE - except speed/time, maluses are handled in a multiplicative way most of times) - Power Level mechanic (low-level stuff scales very well and stays viable) - Concentration vs. Interrupts (completely different, way more impactful) - Stacking rules (item bonuses all stack) - health and healing (no health/endurance like in PoE)

Heh, so the scream originates from private Wilhelm... whose career in the army ended when he took an arrow to the knee (which is the specific scene the scream is from)

If I had more disposable income, I'd buy a lot of hellfire missiles that immediately target and blow up anybody setting off fireworks past 11.

When you begin digging at the spot where the skeleton appears, nothing looks like it has been unearthed (though that’s normal with most dig-able objects), on the second swipe with the black ant shovel a bit of the skeleton is revealed, and the final swipe brings the entire skeleton in view.. for about half a second until it disappears. Lol hope this gets patched soon.

A forbidden fist monk/assassin MC is extremely powerful. With Tuotillo's Shield you are very sturdy and don't have to worry about the +15% damage malus, and you can disappear and do devastating damage from stealth when you wish.

it's part of the power curve of casting in deadfire. single-class casters eventually accumulate enough spells (and of immense power) that you don't really concern yourself with running out by mid-end game. you can trade-off and be a caster/caster multiclass if you want (aloth can't), you get tons more spells earlier on with the trade-off that you don't get the super peak experience. also keep in mind that unlike poe1, in deadfire everyone has the same baseline accuracy and deflection (edit: except fighters, who get +5 deflection to start) and weapon modals. so while a deadfire caster probably can't exert in one fight like a rest-spam caster in poe1 can, when they're out of spells a caster can still put in decent work with just weapons whereas iirc in poe1 a wizard is down like -10 accuracy and deflection compared to a martial, pretty brutal. (in fact if you run through deadfire for the first time on a high difficulty, you might be surprised by how much damage an enemy wizard just auto-attacking can do) edit: in fact, at low levels the main difference in offensive power between aloth (as wizard) w/out spells and pallegina (as paladin) w/out resources is literally zero, so offense just comes down to stats and how you gear them. eventually paladins get more martial-oriented passives and scale enough better health to really matter.

https://www.texasobserver.org/texans-die-from-heat-exhaustion-after-governor-bans-water-breaks/ As someone who works a job where I am outside for a significant amount of time, I can guarantee that this "Death Star" ban on mandated water breaks is going to result in people dying. The political ghouls and their business backers behind this will have blood on their hands and deserve to burn in hell.

Thanks Boeroer! This looks like a fantastic read. Hopefully this'll help me enjoy the game more because, despite preferring one so far, I'm finding that I end up "going through the motions" as it were while playing it as I know what builds I like, where the gear is for them, etc. While I want that level of familiarity here, I do hope the more varied itemization, once I fully understand the items I'm looking at, will lead to more varied setups in repeat playthroughs.

is a tv theme which always comes to mind first when we think o' henry mancini. and lion in winter is our favorite christmas movie, so... 'cause it reminded us o' Gromnir family christmas. HA! Good Fun!

from one of our favorite soundtracks also, we realized how with every passing year, on her majesty's secret service moves up on our list o' favorite bond themes. were always top ten but somehow in spite o' more films, it is now a perennial top three. HA! Good Fun!

HA! Good Fun!

+1, also there seems to be an invisible object and some texture tearing underneath the porch near the haze mix.r that wasn’t there before the wasp update. Please patch the skeleton soon, usually you guys are really good about addressing the glitches, I’m surprised this one has been around so long.

Fixed that for you.

I'm sort of trapped in the middle of the RTwP debate because I want my party members to behave autonomously, but I also want to play in turn-based mode. Yet for some reason I can't have that blend of the two features. I avoid parties in general (in games and in real life), so generally speaking two units is the most I'm willing to micromanage. It's fortunate then that the likes of Larian games, Solasta, and For the King have co-op functionality that reduce the commitment for each player down to that level. Alas, that seems a bridge to far for the children of the Infinity Engine, so I haven't been able to get into the likes of PoE and Pathfinder.

Nope, all of them are just regular downloads, same as if you bought them from the Microsoft Store. Early on, the games were generally provided as UWP apps, which were closed-off to modding but were nonetheless still full local downloads. However these days they're generally just standard Win32 apps and in most cases can be modded in the standard way. Bethesda games on Game Pass can be modded with any mod that does not have a dependency on the Script Extender. Cloud gaming is technically a separate service they provide, but is effectively just an inclusion if you subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate. I've been subbed to Game Pass for years but have yet to try anything on xCloud.

And I was able to defeat last of the 4 big Spirits who came with light from Lenegis in Tales of Arise! The Sylph was the hardest of them all, and I have spent loads of items to stay alive. The reward was my 20th artifact, and the trademark Hot Spring Event .

New minor version available on Nexus : Deadfire Balance Polishing Mod at Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) Fix a couple of items and descriptions. Also should be fully compatible with @Noqn 's Apotheosis (not documented though since it could have been confusing there's already a bunch of stuff in the mod description)

I think it would be more accurate to say it's Gamebryo with 20 years worth of Bethesda bugs progressively added to it.

I think Bethesda has given up on truly trying to address any problems. They know that the average console gamer doesn't care enough about details to notice that things are wrong, and among the PC gamer community anyone who does (or thinks they do) is going to download mods anyway. Why care about getting the most out of your graphics when the players that will complain are already planning to install Bodyslide, Caliente or turn all models into furries.

Nothing like a server process not working for 2 days and somehow no one notices. Either no one actually uses our product or they are all very forgiving.

Doing a momentary pause in between the work things to look up some leatherworking tools. Then realise that they're being sold by a guy in Bulgaria with a storefront titled "D & S Ltd"... The perils of getting into leatherworking is that half the useful hobbycraft tools for it end up costing half the price of the item for shipping since they tend to be shipped from America or Eastern Europe...

Related to recruiting - https://www.wsj.com/articles/military-recruiting-crisis-veterans-dont-want-their-children-to-join-510e1a25 around paywall - https://archive.is/Gj6cW

Dread Delusion It's got Sega Saturn-esque graphics and the models all kinda wobble, the textures are atrocious; by all rights I should hate the look of this game. But I don't. I can see why people have been comparing this to Morrowind. I definitely got that same feeling that I did the first time I stepped onto the shore of Vvardenfell, everything just seems so weird and alien. I'm on some kind of floating island, the sky is purple, there are humongous mushrooms, flying ships, weird mechanical constructs. I love the vibe. The game is still in early access, so I'll mostly just mess around with it for now to get a feel for the systems. I haven't had a chance to try out spell casting yet. Once it fully releases I'll attempt a full playthrough. I don't usually do early access, but it was on sale because of the Steam Summer Sale and this seems like it would be my jam, Sega Saturn/PS1 graphics notwithstanding.

The Russians do make the prettiest planes.

The evolution of German tanks during WWII, showing a Panzer I, Panzer IV and Panther. Notice the size differences. They start with the smallest one...

Early Sunset (Azata spoilers) Anyway, lost my Aasimar wings (and the AC bonus!), reached Mythic 9 and since I had a green version of my character’s portrait (of worse quality, truth be told), I used it as the Azata's new appearance.

Once again we had 2 full weeks of fireworks leading up to the 4th and fireworks every day since. It wouldn't be so bad if they stopped at a decent hour but they go until early in the AM. Keeps my son up, scares my dogs, and occasionally makes my PTSD flare up.