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I'm going with Bobcat Goldthwait.

Hey @LadyCrimson and @Gorth! Thanks for the heads up. Testing myself, I'm noticing the same thing, which is weird as we haven't made any changes in awhile. I've reported it to the web team to take a look and see what the heck is goin on. Hopefully we can get it sorted and back up to speed soon. Thanks again for letting us know and sorry for the trouble

As the saying goes, friendly Sweden is always prepared to fight against threats from the east, and it's going to fight all the way to the last Finn. After that, Sweden collapses.

Greetings Watchers, patch 1.3.7.1411 is live to all players! Please let us know if you run into any issues during your time with this updated version of the game. https://support.obsidian.net/contact The player log file has been moved by Unity and it can be found in the following location: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Obsidian Entertainment\Pillars of Eternity It has been renamed player.log You can also opt out of this current update by using the Legacy branch in Steam. In your Steam Library Right click on Pillars of Eternity, and select "Properties" Select the "Beta" Tab, and click the Drop Down for labeled "NONE - Select "legacy - Legacy build 1.3.7.1356" Close the Window, and you should have a download ready. Attempting to play the game should automatically trigger the download. 1.3.7.0.1377 changes are in bold. General: We have updated to Unity Version 2019.4.11. Updated graphics to DirectX 11. Fixed an issue where backer rewards would appear or unlock incorrectly. Also fixed a case where backer rewards might not unlock at all for users in the public beta. Corrected save file location for the public beta (You should no longer need to move save files into a _Local_ directory for them to show up correctly). Fixed an issue that prevented POE1 saves from being imported to POE2 after the last patch. If you possess a save game that could not be imported, loading and re-saving should correct the issue. Fixed an issue that caused some users to receive DLC content and/or backer items without having proper access to them. If you possess a save game that will not load on 3.7.1.1411 or later, due to it being created with DLC you did not purchase, please send us a support ticket along with your GOG or Steam username and a copy of a save game that has the issue (if multiple saves are affected, you only need to send 1 so we can verify). This issue did not affect users on Game Pass or Epic. Removed duplicate unused asset bundle files that artificially increased installation size. Navigation: Fixed areas that could not be navigated in numerous scenes. The lake in Cayron's Scar should no longer be unintentionally traversable when submerged. Fixed some cases where NPCs would become stuck when pathing during cutscenes. Fixed some cases where NPCs would walk or run in place during cutscenes. Fixed a handful of doors throughout various scenes that could be walked through due to lacking proper collision. Visual and Audio: Fixed multiple cases where characters might T-Pose briefly at the beginning of a cutscene. Fixed an issue where paperdolls in character creation and inventory screens might appear blurry. Overwhelming Wave should more reliably play its visual effects. Fixed VFX issues with the Woodskin spell rotating or attaching incorrectly. Symbols western chamber of Lle a Rhemen should now properly light up when expected. Fixed redundant horn audio playing after the battle of Yenwood. Fixed an issue where attempting to open locked containers could play multiple voice lines at once. Fixed a handful of cases where dialogue audio wouldn’t play when certain nodes were re-triggered. VFX will no longer become displaced when a character teleports or uses a movement ability. Unstrung Bow’s visuals will now properly appear on the ground when discovered. Soul Whip VFX are no longer lost on save/load or transitions. Penetrating Shot, Vulnerable Attack, Savage Attack, and similar VFX should no longer be lost on save/load or transitions. Released soul VFX in Sun in Shadow should now display correctly. Fixed an issue with Ninagauth’s Freezing Pillar VFX overlapping other visuals. Gafonercos will remain correctly positioned after completing certain attacks. Potion of Fleet Feet now properly plays a drinking animation. Reading from scrolls and rites will now position the scroll correctly in the reader’s hands. Fixed an issue that would cause water VFX to display improperly in certain areas. Fixed an issue where spoken dialogue was being unintentionally affected by reverberation. Quests and Dialogue: Ready the Cannons side quest should now properly update its objectives. Dialogue from Buried Secrets quest should no longer allow the player to demand their payment more than once. Fixed an issue where multiple barked lines in Gilded Vale could overlap excessively. Fixed an issue where Eder’s bark lines in the Temple of Eothas may end abruptly. Fixed a case where Calisca could trigger the wrong bark line near the camp inside Cilant Lîs. Fixed bark lines in Defiance Bay cutting short after their first line. Crag Ogres in Flames-That-Whisper Cavern should now more reliably play their banter on approach. Prisoners in Icantha’s house should no longer respawn in certain cases after save/load. Combat and Mechanics: Earth Blights should no longer sometimes detach from their selection circles when dominated. Scroll of Ray of Fire should now appear correctly and more accurately match the behavior of the Ray of Fire spell. Fixed a case where manually resolving stronghold combat could sometimes yield no rewards. Fixed a case where prone characters might try to move while prone, resulting in sliding behavior. Concelhaut’s Draining Missiles should no longer occasionally show 0.0 damage in the combat log. Weapon Specialization: Peasant should now reliably add its damage to unarmed attacks. Fixed some cases where the Halt spell might confuse enemy AI, causing them to repeatedly interrupt and re-attempt their own actions. Removed errant untargetable Xaurip that could sometimes appear in Dyrford Crossing. Fixed a case where Sleafhota might teleport to an alternate location mid-dialogue before attacking the player. Attacking Osrya directly will now reliably engage with her revenant and skeleton minions. Fixed a case where all survival camping bonuses might appear after spending only a single skill rank on Survival. One-Eyed Molina’s Gold-Fingered Spike-Flinger’s last two soulbound upgrades now increase Reload Speed instead of decreasing it. Deadfire Pack’s soulbound weapons now have the Universal weapon group. Fixed an issue with status effects from old saves duplicating when loaded on newer builds. Battle-Forged Godlike racial ability should no longer trigger a hit on the owner when non-hostile abilities are used (E.g. Second Wind). Caedebald’s Blackbow and Llengrath’s Blunt Wisdom are now of the universal weapon type. Stalker’s Torc item should now apply and display its effects correctly. Psychic and Brutal Backlash now correctly respect their per encounter rules. St. Ydwen’s Redeemer no longer displays “Destroys Vessels” activations in the combat log when not fighting a vessel. Scroll of Minoletta’s Minor Missiles will now better match the effects of the origin spell. User Interface and Interaction: Fixed a UI issue where chants could sometimes clip beyond their scrolling frame. Fixed a case where the damage type icon on the character sheet might not position correctly. Fixed some cases where assigning companions to multiple stronghold missions at once might cause UI issues. Quick loading with the crafting or enchanting UI open should no longer result in a permanent black screen. Fixed a typo in the description of Animal Companions. Fixed an issue where highlighting certain parts of a defeated enemy would not allow you to loot them. Doors in some scenes that were difficult to interact with have had their collision revised and should now be more reliable. Fixed a case where the final pressure plate in the Temple of Woedica would not appear. Examining the wall trophy inside of Elm’s Reach should now be possible. Skipping intros when first starting the client should now be more responsive. Fixed accuracy tooltips not appearing on the character sheet. Interactable tree in the Abbey of the Fallen Moon now can be interacted with properly. Fixed a bug preventing interactable highlights from appearing after opening the map. Fixed an issue that caused tooltips to sometimes shake in the UI. Fixed incorrect version numbers across different platforms. They should all match now and increment correctly. Known Issues: Some users have reported crashing on 32-bit operating systems. While 32-bit operating systems fall below our minimum requirements, users that had better luck on 3.4.0.1318 will find a Legacy branch available Steam/GOG which may yield better results. Some users on GOG have reported a black screen on startup. This is being investigated, but disabling the Galaxy overlay appears to be a temporary solution. This update is currently unavailable for OSX & Linux. We are investigating bringing these platforms up to speed as part of a future patch. The feedback from the community surrounding this release has been wonderful. Thank you all for the continued support!

I can only eliminate this by reducing duplicates to 0. I guess the process of creating those duplicates does wierd things that's more than causing serious stuttering/freeze.

I find the balance between tactical gameplay and abbey stuff just out of wack. Especially in the first half, you have an hour of chatting for twenty minutes of "playing"

Danny Devito could single handedly defeat the Netherbrain.

You might want to do a brief study about the Holocaust in Norway and then possibly reconsider your position on this. Incidentally, this continues to be a question that much of Norway is extremely firmly in denial about.

On NG+ you skip most quests, but journal still gets clogged like a Glasgow toilet Very annoying indeed

If you wanna have high RES for dialogue options, 15 is a good score, but if you wanna catch ALL options concerning RES, you need 20 RES. A score of 18 can catch most of the choices anyway. You don't have to change your stats, you can achieve higher score with 15 starting RES and then stack some bonuses relatively easy: 8 DEX is ok for a TANK, as Boeroer said, and moreover with high RES you have high concentration and it is less possible for you to be interrupted

I'm suddenly picturing a breaking news story re: store employees chasing after some crazed man rampaging through a grocery store with an armful of stolen potatoes. ...I've definitely had moments in games like that. So frustrating.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/development-diary-6-mission-scripting-and-ink.1620877/ sound like game maybe years away

Very nice, Gentlemen, many thanks. So, for the moment I would opt for: 1. Psion/troubadour - weapon + (small shield), maybe this Thundercrack pistol or some implement. But for this guy it's merely a stat stick anyway. 2. Pal/rogue dual wielding Lover's Embrace and something else (Marux Amanth? Magi's Cudgel?). Trickster most probably. 3. Herald (Darkozzi w/ Outworn buckler is tempting, but not sure if worth it. Would rather go Shieldbearer with large shield (Cadhu Scalth?) and max engagement slots. 4. I am tempted to go single class with at least 1 character and leaning towards Paladin to farm zeal from skeletons. In such a case, a 2-hander would be in order. 5. I was tempted to go inquisitor or crusader here, but wait a second, I have seen some fun cantor builds around here!

They're infamous for approaching every single streamer and YouTuber, or influencer of any kind, with sponsorship deals and flooding the internet with ads, hence why I jokingly made my post like I was shilling for them. They're effectively the newer version of those banner ads you used to see on every single website ever that had a sexy lady with her milkers (when autocensor won't let me post a word I will use the most comical euphemism I know instead) out and text that read "Come Play My Lord".

IronSource is an in-game advertising platform that Unity acquired for 4.4 billion dollars. Unity already laid off 1,300 employees before this latest lay off. Unity lost the trust of every development studio in the business last year after their now ex-CEO announced that they were retroactively changing their software licensing agreement from one of the most lenient to bat**** insane. They also offered to exempt certain studios from this if they implemented the new IronSource ad platform. Unity is being run into the ground.

The Counselor build is very helpful for a party and imo a good candidate for a main char who wants to enjoy the dialogue options. Since it's not a damage-dealer but a support & tanking character (and later also good occasional CC) this character doesn't need a lot of DEX. 8 is sufficient if you can tolerate that he will not be the fastest striker. You can totally switch the race and it will still be fine. You could also focus even more on the accuracy support and pick Darcozzi Paladini (with Inspiring Liberation - another +10 ACC buff that stacks with everything) over Shieldbearer for example. Unfortunately some of the cornerstones of the Ploi Paladin (Coordinated Attacks and a weapon with the Marking enchantment) don't exist in that form in Deadfire anymore. However, a little variation that I tried that uses a special unique (and early) Estoc (instead of a marking weapon + shield) and is a Paladin/Ranger multiclass. It fulfills a similar role when it comes to ACC support. If the mind control aspect of the Ploi build (see different items' spellbinds) was more interesting then Paladin/Cipher with the same weapon choice would be a better pick. The Estoc I'm refering to is the Blade of the Endless Paths. It's implemented differently in Deadfire than in PoE but it still allows to improve the hitchances against enemies. In PoE it was done with Marking (ACC bonus), in Deafire it's done with lowering the enemies' deflection. The Ploi build would also work fine with the Blade of the Endless Paths by the way. Less tanky but better weapon damage. Until one reaches the Blade of the Endless Paths (comes pretty late in PoE) one can use an early Pollaxe named "Spectacular Spetum" which also hasthe Marking enchantment. Pollaxes use the same weapon focus as Estocs so it's a perfect backup weapon as well once you get the Estoc. So if you are looking for a smooth character build transition from PoE to Deadfire you should probably make a Ploi-inspired Paladin but instead of Sword & Board with Estoc/Pollaxe. Of course a Shieldbearer without a shield would be weird. In that case another Paladin subclass might be better I think. In that case I would chance the attributes a bit and give a little more DEX (because Estoc with lowish DEX and fat/slow armor bc. of no shield is not that much fun).

Dofus is based on a french video game series (including the games Dofus and Wakfu). There's also a tv animated series Dofus: Aux trésors de Kerubim and Wakfu and some Wakfu OAVs. The movie Dofus, livre 1: Julith I think suffered in France based on its release date if newspapers at the time are to be believed. The lack of box-office success caused them to drop the 2 planned sequel Dofus films and a Wakfu film Anakma (the game, publishing and animation company) have made some other movies since this, though. They were part of a co-production for Netflix' Mutafukaz aka MFKZ and did a film called Princesse Dragon. Also did some other animated and live action series/shorts.

True, I didn't think about first stages of game for a beginner player, where to not hit often the enemy could be annoying and this could not make the game enjoyable Aside of Priest, also a Paladin (the main char or an hireling at Black Hound) could help for ACC with Zealous Focus: maybe it doesn't stack with all, but it is a more manageable source of ACC early moments of game, "persistent" e with no action to think about for a beginner (put on the modal and forgive it). I totally agree for DEX: not to being able to make actions it's worst than low accuracy, I tried to build some melee chars with low DEX and I had to desist, no way at all! Aside the usual "only tank meat" char or some chanter builds, better put points in DEX; furthermore fast chars are very fun most of times

For Raedric's Castle I nearly always make sure to bring a Chanter with White Worms (usually that's Kana). As long as you don't reload the map and turn off the "gib" option in the game menu you can "reuse" the corpses of fallen enemies over and over again which is very effective at chokepoints where you can pile them in a small area. So what I will do is to lure enemies to a doorway, kill them there, then lure more enemies to that chokepoint, kill them with White Worms, lure more and so on. At some point whole groups will get one-shot by White Worms' multiple corpse explosions. It's the easiest way I know to clear the whole castle whithout wasting too many resources. I like to loot all the rel. expensive plate armor and other gear (which grants a lot of money so early in the game). I didn't actually try that with a solo Chanter - but I don't see why this wouldn't work solo, too.

Yeah - it's true that PER isn't that important in the long run. After all is done it might turn out to have been the least important attribute (out of the trio DEX, MIG and PER) when it comes to dealing damage. But I still recommend to put points into PER - especially for beginners who want to play offensive characters - because the first impression of your character is very important to how you perceive your char's performance, if you enjoy it or not. In the early game the options to raise your accuracy - and thus to improve your odds of delivering a hit (let alone a crit) - are very limited. At the same time the enemies have relatively high defenses (and also sometimes rel. thick armor compared to your damage per hit). It's one reason why the early game feels so tough for low ACC starters such as Barbs and also a reason why using a single one handed weapon is effective in the early game: it gives you +12 accuracy. If you miss a lot it's superannoyig of course - but also grazes' damage malus have a bigger negative impact on your overall damage than later in the game (where the additive damage malus of grazing gets countered by a variety of damage bonuses) so you barely scratch enemies with somewhat decent armor if you only graze them. This becomes very apparent in Raedric's Castle (lots of armored foes with good defenses). So especially in the early game you can feel a big difference between a character who has like ~10 ACC or even more over the others (be it from single one handed weapon and/or lots of PER and/or flanking the enemies before actually striking). So, basically it's a recommendation that makes it more likely that you won't get frustrated by your (otherwise fine) char's weapon performance in the early game - which will increase the odds that you stick with it and don't drop it prematurely. This is also the main reason why I recommend to take Inspiring Radiance asap with a fellow Priest. It's a short-lived +10ACC bonus - but it stacks with everything (good for the later game) and makes the early game a lot easier. If you know what you are doing you can totally drop PER and be fine. Later in the game there's so many options to compensate for lower PER and a few additional points of accuracy will only get you decreasing returns. But for somebody who's still "stumbling" through the mechanics a bit I'd say it's an easy way to make your har more enjoyable. In that regard I also value DEX over MIG a lot - it's more frustrating to play a very sluggish char than it is to play one who hits a bit less harder imo. But all in all, as was said: attributes matter, but they don't matter too much.

Greetings! To anyone having difficulties finding the public beta, our apologies for not specifying - the beta branch does not yet support Mac/Linux, this is something we're investigating. Sorry for the confusion, I'll keep you posted if we make progress on this front. Also, for comments on One-Eyed Molina's Gold-Fingered Spike-Flinger and other Deadfire pack soulbound weapon groups, I'll make sure we correct that for the next build of this patch. Thanks for the support on this one. For answers to other questions, see below! @Mraicor One trap per character and/or trap talents. This is a little outside the scope for this patch, but there's definitely a community desire for better trap archetype support and it's not outside of possibility for a future patch. I'll track this and put it to consideration. Thanks for calling attention to it! I'll also make sure each of the other issues you reported are tracked and investigated as well (Korgrak, The Old Watcher, Deadfire items (mentioned above)). Thanks for the support! @Kvellen Output logs should exist at - [Your LocalDrive]\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\output_log @Space-Cadet No PC controller support at this time. Though, if the opportunity presents itself, it's something I'd like to investigate in the future. @DicesMuse This patch is focused on PC at this time. @Macklin I'll have to investigate the missing commentary tracks, if we have access to them we may be able to restore them in the future. Thanks for calling attention to the issue. @beger Thank you for the support. We've tracked the text size discrepancy and will investigate. @Cerebro83 We've tracked the VFX issue with the Cinders of Fate quest, thanks for your support! @VerNOX We would like to investigate all mods that provide fixes to known issues of the game to ideally incorporate them. Though please bear with us as we work to catch them all. In the meantime, you may wish to use mods for any we have yet to address. Also, thank you for reporting the high-resolution sharpness issue, I'll make sure we investigate this as well. @kronozord The public beta is on Steam only, but when the patch goes live Epic & GoG is expected to be included in the update. Also, this patch has no relation to Avowed, we simply love all of our games and the fans that play them and have an opportunity to make some improvements for everyone involved. @sirrus233 I'll put the suggestion for the original title screen in our database, it would be nice to see again. @Mister_Nobody We'll need to investigate this issue further; do you happen to have a save game you could provide to our support team? If so, we might be able to track down the root cause more easily. If not, we'll do our best to reproduce it on our end with the info you provided. Either way, thanks for letting us know! @Silvaren Thanks for reporting the athletics issue, I'll make sure it's tracked and investigated. @Nightwing32 I'll get the lack of mercy option tracked and investigated. Thanks! @davoker I'll make sure we investigate these issues, especially Psychic and Brutal Backlash. Thanks! @Chaospread I mentioned One-Eyed Molina above, but thanks for also reporting the inconsistency with Korgrak as well. I'll make sure this is tracked. Thanks! @warralek We plan to give the patch a healthy runway to make sure there are no big issues from the engine upgrade, during this time we may update the build version on the public beta once or twice before going live. There's no set timeline for how long that will be, but if we don't see many new issues, or we've resolved most of them, we'll wrap it up and investigate other issues. Thanks everyone for your participation in this beta, your feedback, and your dedication to the game. EDIT** - Also for those that are concerned about your favorite mods that may become invalidated on Steam after the patch goes live, we are investigating moving the current live version to a legacy branch when the new patch goes live. This should allow those that wish to continue their existing playthrough with their current mods to do so. And will give some runway for any popular mods to be updated down the line. More on this as we get closer to release.

All your years of training have prepared you for this moment.

Yet another plug for the Balance Polishing Mod, which adds +1 (+2 w/ Greater Wildstrike) to Power Level for the element associated.

Hi @BarryKent, welcome! Boeroer is a guru of PoE 1 and 2, so all that he say is like a "bible" and you can trust all that there's in this and other posts of his. I would like to add humbly a side note on attributes point partition: unless you are making I build focused on crits, almost every build is viable with 10 PER, because the game is calibrated about this value and also because accuracy can be raised very high with skill, talents, spells, equipment and so on. I made a run on PotD solo with a Orlan with 5 (3 base + 2 racial) PER value: Thus, if you have doubt to which attribute save points, you can go with 10/12 PER and put your points in other useful stats (DEX INT and MIGHT over the others). CON and RES can be keep at 8/10 unless for particularly build OR to get more dialogue OR more peaceful quest resolution (RES above all); MAX/MIN players often tend to dump them also to 3, but for the first runs I discourage this But as Boeroer said (and especially in a party), you can go almost with any point distribution and in any case, you could go to an inn and respec your character changing the attributes points if you think you was wrong or if you wanna experiment other distributions Strategy and equipment play a more important role than stats in this game. Have fun!

Sure, you can do that and that is totally viable. Killing dragons will take a high level party though. They are very tough. Fortunately the attributes (MIG, CON etc.) don't have such a big impact as they had in BG or other D&D games. It's more about the right ability and talent choice and so on. Dwarf Fighter with dual war hammers for example can be effective. But not only with 20 MIG and 16 CON but also with 10 MIG and 18 INT. Because every attribute does something useful your character will not be gimped if you allocate attributes in a different way. He will just be better at certain things (for example delivering longer debuffs with higher INT) than in others (less damage per hit with lower MIG). By the way: High INT Fighters can have really great use: Fighters have great accuracy, way better than spellcasters. And they also have a great self buff that raises accuracy further. Because of that they are very good with items that grant spell effects (look for items with "spellbind" enchantments). For example there's an armor that lets you cast Sunbeam 3/rest and an amulat that lets you cast Sunbeam 2/rest on top. A fighter can cast those sunbeams with very high accuracy which makes them very effective casts. So you can essentialy play a sort of Fighter/Mage just by collecting those items (and having decent INT). Add one of the "cross class" talents such as Aspirant's Mark to emphasize the fighter/caster hybrid build further. A lot of fun builds are possible in this game. The classes are not as restricted as in BG. But that also means you have more creative freedom - and more stuff to think about.

If you want pieces flying around on critcal deathblows you have to look into the game options menu. There's a "gib" select box that has to be checked. But iirc it is on by default. Since the companions start one level above custom hirelings (the ones which you can compose yourself) they are usually not just dying and useless. Imo the game is a lot better with them than without them, at the very least for the first complete playthrough. Builds from the build list usually work for the companions, too - unless there's a specific character race involved which the build is based on (like fire godlike or so). I would recommend to bring a Priest (official companion named Durance). Priests are the most impactful class for a party because their support abilities are so strong. Paladins or Fighters will never be the most potent DPS option (same as in the old BG games etc.) but they can be among the most solid and reliable ones because it is usually difficult to kill then even if they are not build to be tanks. When it comes to melee dps, generally speaking: in this game dual wielding will have an edge over two handed - and that will be better than single weapon. There are of course lots of exceptions, it depends on the type of enemy and build and unique weapon etc. and there's no truly crucial difference, but if one aims for maximal melee dps then dual wielding is the way to go for Paladin or Fighter. A Paladin who wishes to focus on damage dealing should invest into his flames of devotion ability to be able to deliver two impactful strikes during an encounter. Later the ability Sacred Immolation will provide a ton of damage. Fighter has the good Knockdown ability and later the very good Charge ability. Don't sleep on Charge, it can take out weak but dangerous enemies like casters in the back rows very quickly because it does a "hidden" full attack (meaning both weapons strike) at the target on top of its crushing damage that it officially does. The game rewards stacking attack speed bonuses. As dual wielder you can rel. easily reach low recovery time. This is very important for weapon dps. Dexterity gives you speed and so does dual wielding and some talents and abilities but also some items. Speed is not only important for DPS but also to avoid getting interrupted (that sucks) and also to be more responsive/reactive. It can be very frustrating if you cannot drink a healing potion and die because you have to recover from a swing for ages. Accuracy is one of the most, if not the most important stat to have for an offensive character. Besides bringing a Priest who can boost the party's accuracy you want to make sure your dps fighter or paladin has good (or even maxed out) accuracy. First and easiest thing to do is to have good Perception. Then weapon quality provides accuracy among other benefits. A weapon with bonus accuracy is better than one with bonus damage (weapon quality provides both, but there is stuff like "accurate I-III and "damaging I-III" on some weapons). Damage per hit is not as important as damage per second (and attack speed itself) - but it plays an important role when you are against heavily armored enemies. High damage per hit makes it easier to overcome thick armor (more dmg gets through). There's a point where very fast attacks with lower dmg per hit get mostly eaten up by armor and a slow but hefty strike wins the day. So don't neglect dmg per hit altogether. All damage bonuses like from weapon quality or from abilities and also the Might stat raise the dmg per hit. In theory the best weapon dps will come from maxed DEX, PER and MIG and then the fitting abilities and weapons of course while having as little recovery as possible. But of course putting all your points into those that will make you more squishy. And knocked out chars do no dps. So it's a balance. The easier the difficulty setting the more 'glass-cannonish" you guy can be. In general it's very difficult for a melee char to not get attacked. But if you can keep the number of enemies who are attacking you low (for example by flanking an already engaged enemy rather than running inti the fray) you can stay alive much longer. Having said that, Fighter and Paladin are reasonably sturdy compared to most other classes even when going full dps mode. Way easier to stay alive than with Barbarian and Rogue. Rangers by the way don't have to be passive and only shoot bows etc. In PoE they make viable melee combatants - who come with their animal companion which can also be a good melee damage dealer (especially the part of high "damage per hit" against though armor can be done very well by an animal companion, when leveled properly they hit slowly - but like trucks). Rangers don't have the most fancy melee special attacks, but they can be faster bc. of a modal they can pick (see the importance of speed) and they are most accurate - while they come in a pair rather than alone which is already an advantage. Unlike BG games they have no spells besides a lil' tanglefoot thing that you don't need to pick - but are mostly about striking. The best rangers still use bows I'd say, but melee is a viable and fun option, too. I did some build in the build list named "Riptide..." - it's a two-handed melee ranger that was fun to play (but too squishy for a beginner though I think).

I have no idea who this "Dan" is they all keep mentioning ( ), but great/fun video for VA fans.

Best beginner classes are Paladin, Fighter, Ranger and Monk. All of them have good starting values, are front loaded and aren't squishy. I personally like the Monk class best but it has the most "complicated" mechanics of those four. The easiest to start with might be the fighter. Barbarian is another favorite of mine but it's incredibly squishy in the early game due to the abysmal deflection defense - while hitting a barn door at best. It needs some levels to get going (and become lots of fun) and thus isn't great for beginners imo.

The builds on this forum are mostly about great end game results. Optimal builds. Many are great, but not necessary on Normal mode.

IMO survivability until mechanics are understood then mastered is what makes or breaks a players interest in a game. Orlan Fighter or Paladin is a nice early game choice. So is a Moon Godlike Pally with all their healing triggers, its hard to go down. Both are easy to manage.

Belated thanks for this mod! It's really nice to play around with different builds in an arena mode when usually I'd take NPC companions along when playing Deadfire proper. Wrapped up a playthrough of S4 earlier this year, now I'm using it to try out a 5 wizard party.

Okay, I started datamining. Here are 10 8 quick and dirty lists of the highest checks under various circumstances. Watcher, party assisted Alchemy: 15 (decipher notes for the +stat cauldron) Arcana: 19 (conversational fluff with Bekarna) Athletics: 15 (grab Neriscyrlas' phylactery unharmed - I doubt this one is actually Watcher specific) Bluff: 20 (feign loyalty to Nemnok) Diplomacy: 23 (negotiate with the mad spore in TFS) Explosives: 17 (disarm the Godhammer in BoW) History: 18 (declare contract illegal in TFS, probably avoiding a fight with the vithrack boss Sissak) Insight: 20 (...some TFS puzzle?) Intimidate: 22 (convince the Slaying Face to back down) Mechanics: 12 (conversational fluff with the belt quest NPC in SSS) Metaphysics: 20 (avoid fight over starmetal in TFS) Religion: 16 (probably-fluff with Hafjorn in BoW) Sleight_of_Hand: 15 (fake-drink blood in the Splintered Reef) Stealth: 10 (sneak into naga cave on northeastern island - probably not actually Watcher specific) Streetwise: 20 (unseen event with the broken wagon on the starter island) Survival: 18 (mansplain Llengrath to the spore that thinks it's Llengrath) Watcher, unassisted Alchemy: 6 (poison the boar for the Survivor challenge) Arcana: 13 (convince Wael to put their body back to sleep) Athletics: 15 (enter the SSS arena complex via the well) Bluff: 13 (something with the Spindle Man vithrack in Delver's Row) Diplomacy: 16 (convince Wael to put their body back to sleep) History: 7 (seems to create some kind of distraction to allow a companion to steal stuff in a wild encounter on the southwesternmost island) Insight: 10 (call out a bluff from the Surviving Face in SSS) Intimidate: 12 (threaten Wael, but pointless - they won't act differently even if you succeed) Mechanics: 5 (uselessly try to open the chest that begins SSS) Metaphysics: 8 (conversational fluff) Religion: 12 (bow your head to something in a wilderness encounter - unsure of effect) Sleight_of_Hand: 10 (steal from the camp on the Black Isle) Stealth: 4 (knock out some xaurip by a shrine) Streetwise: 12 (cheat in Orlan's Nose ship event) Survival: 9 (avoid some lagufaeth trap) For the next two: Initiating party member means you start an interaction in the real world. It's not a scripted one. Initiating party member, party assisted (both of these are the pustule on the wall in the bowels in TFS, but there might be lower ones) Alchemy: 16 Sleight_of_Hand: 18 Initiating party member, unassisted Sleight_of_Hand: 5 (place a bomb in a brazier to try to assassinate some Wahaki) The next ones should pertain to scripted interactions. Any means it's enough if one member passes. All means everyone has to pass. Any, party assisted: Alchemy: 17 (turn herbicide into fertilizer in TFS) Arcana: 20 (break an enchantment on some armor in TFS) Athletics: 22 (knock down a wall in TFS - can be done with just tools) Bluff: 15 (line seem related to the Wild Mare and/or Konstanten) Diplomacy: 14 (make the escaped slaves on Crookspur Island stop shooting arrows at you) Explosives: 20 (seems to be for the same wall as Athletics 22) History: 14 (fluff about the armor worn by the frozen glamfellen near the Vytmadh portal in BoW) Insight: 15 (something something Fyonlecg TFS) Intimidate: 16 (make the escaped slaves on Crookspur Island stop shooting arrows at you) Mechanics: 26 (open the trick lock in TFS - can be done without any skill) Religion: 15 (seems to be fluff about identifying a wilderness shrine) Sleight of Hand: 15 (mislead someone during the Slayer trial in SSS) Stealth: 18 (some SSS wilderness check) Streetwise: 15 (seems related to finding the chest for Pukestabber) Survival: 19 (navigating the bog on the northwesternmost island) Any, unassisted: Arcana: 4 (seems related to saving a man overboard during a storm) Athletics: 15 (weird mixup with the similar Watcher-only check in SSS) Bluff: 8 (seems to create some kind of distraction to allow a companion to steal stuff in a wild encounter on the southwesternmost island, see Watcher, history 7) Explosives: 12 (blow up a naga totem, probably on a northeastern island) History: 1 (uhh... do we care? probably the Wise Teeth Necklace druid on the starter island) Mechanics: 11 (pin the drake in the SSS grand event) Religion: 5 (...seems to be some fluff line by Xoti, so I'm not sure about the "any" part) Sleight of Hand: 10 (steal a dagger from the campers on the southwesternmost island) Stealth: 13 (?) Survival: 9 (avoid some lagufaeth trap) All, party assisted: Athletics: 19 (enter final boss room in TFS without injury) Stealth: 13 (seems related to Nemnok's dungeon) All, unassisted: Athletics: 8 (climb the gate tower in Hasongo) Honorable mention for weirdest skill check There is exactly one check that is hardcoded to a specific party member. During the wasteland trials to unlock the Survivor fights in SSS, there is a party assisted Athletics 10 check that is forced on party member 4. TODO: 1) Fix eyesore code 2) Datamine context for the checks too 3) Datamine alternative ways to pass checks 4) Make beautiful thread

On that page, the sort-of headline reads: "Examining the True Story of World War II Drama ‘Narvik’". After working in publishing for over a quarter of a century, I have developed a rule whereby no newspaper / magazine that uses exclamation marks on the front page is worth reading, and every book / article that talks about "the true story of" or "the secret life of" something or someone, should be ignored.

Finally I am a thread-starter \o/