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Just completed my Ultimate run today! What a journey. I used an SC Bloodmage. If anyone is curious here's a link to my playlist-- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAm0AdL2JprBmLIvnUJQa_8nGDaN3QPxR Thanks to ValkyOfApocrypha for his route, that was such an invaluable resource in figuring this out.

@Aarik D, @Shyla - would it be possible to create a subforum for Avowed builds, game mechanics etc. like we have them for PoE, Deadfire and Outer Worlds?

Rarely am I more disappointed in my country. Especially my town is something like 40% AfD, it's driving me mad. The only good thing is that AfD stays < 25%, since this means they can't do that much, especially nothing important. Also BSW (the most obvious Putin puppet) is below 5%, which is another good news. The future looks grim. AfD gained over 10% in votes. Next election will probably seal the deal and then after 90something years, we finally have Nazis back in the government. Or the coalition building will fail and CDU will work together with the AfD after all. Remember-- just because they say that they won't work with them, doesn't mean they will stay true to their words. I don't trust any of those snakes. That said, bringing back the CDU is just stupid. They had 16 years with Merkel and they did nothing. In big parts it's their fault that we are where we are now. I'm not blaming SPD, they didn't really had time to do stuff. Personally I would have given them more, just to see what happens.

Yo, where is it @Aarik D? Congrats to no.1 on Steam btw.!

It's funny because I used crafting system but I never checked second tab and only during third region I realized that it's possible to craft higher materials using several from lower tiers and then I was somehow able to upgrade my weapon to legendary halfway through Shatterscarp.

Avowed has a much better inventory system than previous Obsidian games. The crafting is also pretty decent. I don't know who handled that, but they deserve accolades.

This time in Galawain's Tusks. On the quest Wardens Warding regarding Amalia, after parlaying with her she says that I opened the chest behind her and took the armor that was in it but I never touched the chest and its locked requiring a key so I can't open it at all now.

this was actually pretty important to use heavy armor. damage reduction in this game has massive increasing returns, so the difference between heavy armor + arcane veil vs light armor + arcane veil could literally be almost a 2x in damage received. (it was more insane before arcane veil got nerfed, you could have 0 constitution and face-tank enemies on path of the damned with heavy armor, arcane veil, and a ring of deflection or something)

i can say that blast of frost (aka cone of cold) is also really good, just a boatload of damage, albeit over time. but nothing quite compares to how they implemented freezing pillar in this game, nothing quite like seeing from just a few meters away how you insta-kill a batch of enemies with a gigantic block of ice that falls from the sky. makes me want to roll with an SC Tekehu or frost wizard in Deadfire again.

I’ve been told that several people have reported this bug and they’re working on a fix. I have a similar issue with this fix where I can talk to the ambassador but nothing happens afterward and I can’t progress. Something happened while I was talking to him forcing the dialogue to quit and it can’t be started again.

Happy to see you got it figured out. I took me longer than I wanted to get used to the combat but I am absolutley in Love now. Happy Gaming!

We have 25 more years of experience with this situation. You can bet your ass powerful lobby groups will push the conservatives towards working with the AfD, and eventually, the conservatives are going to give in. It happened back in 1933, it happend in 2000, 2017 and almost in 2025 here in Austria and it will happen in Germany, because at the end of the day, Merz can yell "it is time to go back to politics that benefit the majority of Germans again!" as much as he wants, but both the CDU/CSU and Merz in particular are not up to the task. You can't be bought and paid for by the new monyed nobility and make politics for the majority. There's a reason large and powerful corporations support the CDU as much as they do, and a reason why they're heaping money onto the AfD. A CDU-lead government isn't going to help the situation in Germany at all, because - as you already noted - it is by far and large their fault that you're in this situation in the first place. When I look at the more prominent figures of the CDU and CSU, I feel like throwing up. Merz is a multi-millionaire raking in more and more millions every year and considers himself to be a part of the middle class, Philipp Amthor is dangerous and has highly unsavory connections to shady foreign companies and Jens Spahn is as incompetent as he is corrupt. Eh, and I really don't want to talk about Söder, or any of the talking heads out of Bavaria. Where have the times gone when the weirdest thing coming out of Bavaria was a quaint little fellow talking about how much time you are going to save when you board the railway station in Munich. In a way you're lucky that your social democrats stopped being social democrats with Gerhard Schröder and simply became a vehicle to carry on the CDU agenda even without the CDU, which means as long as the SPD has enough votes to form a government with the CDU that will be a more acceptable version - mark my words, once that is no longer possible, or there's a move back to more traditional social democratic values in the SPD, that'll change. In a way, it is not. Having the FDP drop out of the Bundestag while BSW gets in would have put Merz in a fantastically problematic situation insofar as that he would have had to include the CSU's go-to punching back, the Grüne, in his coalition (Hell would freeze over before they'd work with Sarah Wagenknecht or Die Linke), or look directly towards working with the AfD. It would have unmasked him a lot sooner, because it would have been really easy to claim that they tried to make it work with the SPD and the Greens, but just couldn't. At least Christian Lindner got what he deserved, that underachieving little weasle. Bye bye, and hopefully you Germans aren't going to elect the FDP back in like it happend in 2017. The sooner this party of CDU pilot fishes burns in hell the better for everyone.

Here we go again. Avowed made me too nostalgic.

Only really reading this as I read the Darth Plageuis book due to listening to some of the audiobook on Youtube, they chose a great narrator, Daniel Davis. But I've read KJA's Star Wars novels that was enough The book's not too bad though, the scheming isn't what I'd expected from a SW book. I guess I will switch to non-fiction. Maybe will read a book on Hitler's rise (and unlike back in high school when I did it for a project, I won't find Neo-Nazi pamphlets in the book!)

It's my first action game and I had to learn this the very hard way. I still enjoy the lore and the build options of Avowed but I guess, I will never really warm up with this kind of games.

Or maybe a mod that turns Avowed into a CRPG?

All casters (and some martial classes) have great difficulty early level, maybe only druids are exceptions. Scrolls are not needed actually, except bosses/dragons fights and Cipher can beat some of these without scrolls.

I am def. not happy with the results, but it went as expected. CDU/SPD (which is the only realistic option now) always meant stagnation and hesitation in the past. Something we (and esp. Europe) really don't need right now. But maybe they'll prove me wrong. It also has direct consequences for my personal life because my wife is part of the higher ranks of the Foreign Ministry. Although here it's more important how decent and competent the actual minister is, it's less about the party. I met a lot of politicians in my life because of my attachment to the Foreign Ministry via wife, esp. when serving in foreign countries. Every party has decent people (cannot include AfD here though because I never personally met an AfD politician). Sometimes the politicians I generally agreed with and I thought are decent human beings turned out to be douches - and vice versa. It's the same with personnel and voters. --- My vote: I always consult the "Wahl-O-Mat" (since it's available), which is a website that presents a lot of political questions/demands to assess. Based on your (weighted) answers/assessments it shows you which parties' programmes do cover your views best. I can show you my results: I recommend this or similar tools to everybody who is about to cast a vote in an election. It helps to clear up the absolute chaos the media as a whole and esp. social media is causing and see which party is proposing what and if that's actually okay with you.

I don't think it's just you. Parries are fun, and I don't like that to be taken out. I still enjoy builds and personalizations, so I still would not want duel wield to have all the advantages, I'm sure it can be balanced differently. Adding a new key for that seems possible, I remember I installed a similar mod in Skyrim for either block or bash with dual wield. Also there is still sense to use 1H instead of 2H since it's faster, and a middle ground between 2H and Dual wield (faster and parry). Maybe 1H can be improved as well to make it more appealing.

I finished first playthrough few days ago. It took me about 75h to listen to all conversations, explore every corner of the maps and finish all sidequests. I did it as pure mage caster type character. I've seen potential to build PoE1 style blaster wizard with freezing wand (in first playthrough I used Minoletta's Conduit). Now I'm playing melee character with two handed sword and medium armor. Imo we need section to discuss game mechanics. There are still things that aren't clear. Like damage reduction system - how it works? What comes first? Percentage reduction or fixed damage treshold? Edit: typos

I don't remember if there is a tutorial message, but it is in the tutorial (I think under basic info), so I knew from the beginning. I didn't find it that useful, ended up with a surplus of iron and had to buy other matierials anyway. Tbh, I am not a fan of the 'upgrade quality' system, it is just boring because of how repetitive it is. Cooking and emchanting are more fun

Well, it is more of an action game and RPG, so skills set from traditional cRPGs won't help you here. I am playing dodging wizard/ranger on hard, and I can't say the game has been hard (I have plenty of experience in action games though). Sometimes dodge doesn't fire off (character jumped before, and now isn't quite grounded well enough) - but in general I found it easy to use. I invested on perk in Ranger tree for dodge to consume less stamina. Some enemies have massive tracking, so it is not only about dodging out of the way, but also dodging at the right time, otherwise they will still hit you with the attack. The only general advice I would have when playing as a squishy character is to prioritize enemies. Healers and ranged enemies first, before tanky melee. I have been switching so far between light and medium armor - though I have enough essence that I don't find essence penalty to be noticable. Corrosive Syphon is great and regaining health - also gather food and cook recipies at camp - with so much healing I barely touched my reserve of healing and essence potions - I think I have over 30 of each by now.

I was going for something opposite (spellcaster with a gun), but skills points are far and few between (SkillUp might have not been kidding). I find myself relying more and more on spellcasting, as couple grimories offer just too much of a variety. The only spells I memories so far are Corrosive Siphon and Parasitic Staff for Health and Essence regen. Man, smacking people with a magic stuff is fun in this game.

I am more set on needing a character build thread now. I learned that when you respec, you basically retain your level. So that means after you spend your 1 mandatory point, you can drop points where ever in the tree up to your level. Reason this is important is say you are doing a Parasitic Staff build hoping to transition to Spirit Lance. Well once you unlock Spirit Lance you should respec and move your Parasitic Staff points to Spirit Lance because you don't need to progress linearly necessarily. That means in your builds you probably want to be respeccing at gear or level breakpoints. I will definitely be respeccing at 10 to get Stunning Blow for instance as Parasitic Staff builds dumb amounts of Stun and with its Stun AOE I bet it'd be crazy with Stunning Blows.

My wizard is wielding that axe too, it is a great combination with the frost aura and blizzard spells. I've found that food crafted from the better recipes you get from the survival perk makes a lot of difference. Helps with managing essence, because of essence regeneration, but also because the different food bonuses seem to stack, so now before tougher battles my wizard has a picnic. :D

Hah, so after my 14 cheap days with microsoft game pass were over, I canceled the subscription. Now since I'm (almost) done with Deadfire, I figured it's time to give Avowed a try... and now it turns out, I could get that $1 game pass deal a second time. So now I can play Avowed for $1 for 14 days. Unless the game starts to suck hard, I should have finished it by then. My initial impression is... damn, visually this looks damn great. The performance is really good as well. No stuttering, no texture issues, no nothing.

Here are a few tips that may help you : - One of the best ways to mitigate damage in this game is Heavy Armors. They will nerf your essence pool a bit but early game it doesn't matter that much compare to what they bring to the table. - Use Arcane Veil as soon as you can. It has been nerfed but is still a very good spell and rank 2 keeps you safe from projectiles. - Upgrade your armor (and weapons too), it's one off the most important thing to do in this game in order to stay effective/relevant against higher tier enemies. - Check your endurance bar (the white one). If you find yourself out of endurance quite often while dodging/blocking, consider putting some points into Resolve and/or maybe the heavy armor talent. - If you chose the wizard route, try to find a Grimoire of Greater Elements ASAP. All the spells it features are very good early on (and even late game actually). - Also I would suggest you use a gun early on. It's a very nice weapon type that deal tons of damage with headshots, like spells it doesn't scale with crit chance (because headshots), and while it's reloading you can cast spells from your grimoire.. (A very very strong talent to combo with guns is Steady Aim) - Remember that while under the effect of Arcane Veil, your spells cannot be interrupted. I'm pretty confident anyone can beat this game in normal/easy difficulty. Just keep trying and learning about the mechanics and eventually it'll work out

I was out of town, so I have to be twice as fast downloading to catch up.

That's a lot of downloading for a demo.

Obsidian's UI has been overall solid for a while now, no? Both PoEs were excellent and I can't recall having issues with Outer Worlds either. I can't think of anything specific Avowed does UI does, that other games don't, but I think it benefits from restrain when it comes to loot. Influx of stuff isn't as extreme as in Bethesda game, and itemisation is straightforward so it doesn't take much effort to figure out what you get and what you want to do with it - qualty system is just easier to judge at a glance, than pick up a weapon and compare minor difference in damage done. I wouldn't say Avowed has crafting - you have food recipies and occasional granades recipies. One one hand I like how items for recipies are interchangable (like any mean/veggie etc. will do) though it makes transfering collected items into more powerful versions a bit tedius - yes you can create 7 Mariner's Porridge but because all those recipies will use different items you will have to confirm and cook each one seperately.

Hi! That depends on what you like better. Arcane Veil is limited per rest and can never be a spell mastery (per encounter) spell. So that's limiting. Also there's normal spells that function in a similar way (Mirrored Images etc.) and don't stack with it. But if you are melee-focused and if you tend to rest often then it's great to have. Parasitic Staff and Spirit Lance both have very high base damage (twice the amount of other two handed weapons) and the Staff is of exceptional quality right at lvl 1 - which is very powerful and feels just great in the early game. Also spares you a lot of other spells per rest. The Lance is superb and has an AoE - and it has speed! In combination with Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, some damage bonuses (Two Handed Style, Might, Apprentice's Sneak Attack, Savage Attack etc.) you can reach very good melee/AoE dps. The pinnacle would be to gain Gauntlets of Swift Action so you could reach 0 recovery with the Spirit Lance. Which is kind of bonkers. A melee Wizard has to be more sturdy than a ranged one, even if he oly operates from the second row - so you need to either invest in defensive talents and/or abilities/spells and use them. This can be Arcane Veil, but you can also do without it. Melee Wizard needs more micromanagement. Blast is a passive so it will always be there. It becomes very potent in combination with Combusting Wounds and Kalakoth's Minor Blights (summoned wand-like weapon): because every hit in the AoE of Minor Blights will cause a Blast, you can have a LOT of damage rolls that all trigger Combusting Wounds - if you manage to hit many enemies with Minor Blights+Blast. Lots of damage rolls (no matter how weak) in combination with Combusting Wounds melts all mobs but the fire immune ones. Good crowd control is nice to have (sturdy front line, disables, using choke points etc.) so you can reach many enemies with the AoE. This approach can work with a glass-cannon build. If you get rushed you need a plan B, but you don't have to be somewhat sturdy at all times like a melee wizard would. For a main character I think the more fun approach is the melee way - if you like that in the first place. Because one tends to micromanage the main character a lot more than the others anyways. The Blast Wizard is better for companions and adventurerers imo because you don't have to move and position them a lot.

My passion project sees the light of day! What can you do with it? Create builds! Export/import them! Make a build, press Summarize, then use one of the copy buttons below. Look at what abilities do! Mouse over icons on desktop; press icons on mobile/tablet. I don't have any inside info - the data is from fansites and videos - so there are some assumptions behind it that may not be correct: You get one point per level, starting at 2. There are no bonus skill points. The level cap is 25. This I'm pretty sure of, because there is no level 25 tier (which there should be if the cap were 30 or higher), but Iron Fists rank 4 requires level 25. You don't have to spend ability points as soon as you get them. You can hoard them. You can wait until you're level 20 and then learn all level 20 abilities at once. Therefore, the calculator lets you skip levels/hoard points if you turn off strict mode. As a result of these assumptions, there is a maximum of 24 points you can spend in my calculator. This may very well be wrong, so don't take it as gospel. I would love to know if you know/think differently! I have faithfully copied the data as written, other than fixing a few typos here and there, but the following are probably not correct: Rank 2 Corrosive Siphon can permastun an enemy. Freezing Pillar, Blackbow and Pull of Eora can be learned without finding them in a grimoire. These are the only spells that require Grimoire Mastery without having to be learned from a grimoire. I expect they do in fact need to be learned from a grimoire. Sniper is 25% for all ranks. Looking at other passives that are 25% at rank 1, it's probably supposed to be 25%/40%/50% or 25%/35%/40%. And now for some questions you may have about the tool... I want to make a max level build and/or not worry about build order. Turn off strict mode. I exported, but didn't get the build order I had in mind. When you play around and reduce skill levels while in strict mode, the calculator will try to keep your build intact and valid rather than force you to start over, but it cannot always figure out the order when you do this. If you want to be sure it gets the order right, start over and only increase skills to get your build. If you didn't lower any skills while building and the order still ended up wrong, do let me know. I can't increase this skill, why? You've spent all 24 points, the skill has no more ranks, you're missing a pre-requisite (Grimoire Mastery or Unbreakable), or you're in strict mode and taking the skill would cause you to skip levels. I can't lower this skill, why? It's a pre-requisite (Grimoire Mastery or Unbreakable) for a skill you still have. Get rid of that skill first. I have an issue with the calculator. What should I do? Post it here! I have a suggestion for the calculator. What should I do? Post it here! I have made a build that I want to talk about. What should I do? Post it! But not here. Give your build the space it deserves with its own thread!

Did a short break from Deadfire and went into Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. It's probably the best Life is Strange type game in years. Though I'm not sure if it's really a game or rather an experience. Chapter 2 is supposed to release in April... sux.

Btw: because I cannot play Avowed for long bc. motion sickness (and generally finding those types of first person games meh in the first place) I started a Shifter/Kind Wayfarer build in Deadfire just to see how it plays in the early and mid game (before all the Nature's Terror/Sacred Immolation shenanigans) - and it's surprisingly good. You get the Ring of Focused Flames so early and that boosts your FoD accuracy so much (in comparison to enemies' deflection) while you also heal at the same time (white flames). And you add either bleeding dmg (Boar) without recovery malus or have great speed (Cat) while having decent armor "for free". I would totally recommend this to new players who don't want to wait a long time until a build comes together. Maybe the mid game until Sacred Immolation is more boring, haven't reached that point yet. What I also learned is that bringing an Arcane Archer/Beckoner hireling with Essence Interrupter to Gorecci Str. and the Digsite is the best thing you can do imo (maybe besides AA/Ancient). Animal Companion + Essence Interrupter "summons" in the middle of the enemy lines (after some Imbue missile shots) + (what feels like too many) skeletons or wurms turns all those difficult encounters into cakewalks.

I realize it's been a month already, but I thought I'd notify how I solved this problem, maybe someone will find it helpful. I installed the Binary Opposed Dispositions mod and told Eliam that he was free and that he could go to the Temple of Berath in Neketaka. I got one Benevolent disposition point and then just overlapped it using cruel disposition points that I earned by other actions. Thanks for the replies everyone.

I always try not to overuse scrolls, but with Cipher in SOLO I think I'll have to use a few. In comparison (and in my experience), priest, chanter and druid can be served alone even without scrolls, that if, all I carry as tankers with shield, I'm making an exception hehe In fact, my last run with a Druid had the exact same attributes as the ones I posted here, the first set, not the alternative one, but with 1 more point in INT and PER in exchange for having 8 CON instead of 10. My Priest has literally the same attributes as the alternative version of this Cipher, actually, just 1 less point in MIG in exchange for 1 more in PER. Angio's Gambeson, the Priest takes care of himself, he can handle everything, though leveling him up to at least level 5, where he really starts to shine, is really tough.

Once you have access to Wall of Draining, the 3s could be increased a lot. I'm going to take a look if the bous effect is always here after switching off the weapon, maybe that can give some perspective to your idea. Edit : Then, as intended, you can use the Seeker's Fang to proc the engagment immunity, and prolonge the effect with Wall of Draining, an change the weapon to another set and you keep the bonus effect. After combat end, the effect is still active and you can prolonge them with Strand of Favor trick forever.

plain fighter especially. power/inspired strike, inspired discipline, even sundering blows are costed way too expensively that in terms of how you actually play a fighter, an SC fighter doesn't really add that much variety to an MC fighter, you're still mostly a knockdown/mule kick engine.

Yeah that was the idea; honestly I'm rethinking it and I'm not wholly certain it matters that much. My main concern was whether the 3 secs immunity to engagement for every dex affliction (i.e. Spider's Escape) really compared to Squid's Grasp's immunity to flanking for a tactician multi

one thing i miss from deadfire is the auto-generated tooltips that help explain a lot of detailed mechanics. this is the kinda stuff i puzzle about. i'm too focused on finishing the game with my limited time to do much testing (though i did do a few tests on frozen + explosive damage), but maybe someone will do this testing in the near future. (it'd also be great if there was a way to figure this stuff out from the game files... the lack of a combat log really makes it hard to introspect some of this stuff - like i was able to show that shattering frozen enemies with explosion really does a massive boost, but there's no damage numbers or combat log to examine)

After playing for a few days, here's my wish-list for small (I hope) updates. Option to make radial menu a Hold rather than a Toggle Plenty of precedent for this in other games, feels more natural (imo) Back action could be handled with center click for M+KB, normal back button (B, Circle) for gamepads Extend radius of discovery on the map Currently fog of war requires you to be within ~10 ft of something to reveal it on the map. You can walk down a street between buildings and the buildings won't show up on the map. You can walk to the edge of a cliff and the hash marks denoting the impassible boundary won't show up on the map. I shouldn't have to crisscross the map in a 5 ft search grid to reveal it Suggest making the distance 3x-4x larger. Perhaps the same distance used to unlock fast travel points? Currently you discover them and then look at the map and they're still deep in fog of war! Companions should not thank you for reviving them when you die I'm guessing combat "ends" and they get up Maybe they could actually say something about you dying! Disable changing armor/clothing/trinkets in combat Encourages degenerate play. For example swapping in the White Key Cameo trinket every time you revive a companion. At least on higher difficulties? Allow situational abilities like Firestarter to be bound to the action bar Feels weird that you can't Also, bug: companion abilities that are bound to multiple quick slots don't restore properly after leaving camp. Allow quick-load key to work during dialogue. I can hit escape and then Load Game, so might as well let me hit F8. Thanks! Loving the game.

The reason is: I get motion sickness after playing like 30mins of this (and similar) games. I then have to stop, else... Farewell, Avowed - and the lunch I had.

I died on the first try of the Ygwulf fight. When I respawned and came back into the room he's not there, and I'm locked in the room. There are two doors to exit that both require Ygwulf's key. No other way out. I tried to fast travel out of the room, it says "you can't fast travel right now". I'm not in combat, the quest marker for where Ygwulf is supposed to be is right in the middle of the room, just no Ygwulf and I can't go anywhere, so pretty much I can't play the game anymore.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/24/politics/us-joins-russia-ukraine-un-vote/index.html What a time we're in

Roberta Flack

Have the same issue the last save file is 6 hours before this bug basically 2 hours in the game it’s impossible to fast travel out of this situation or reload please fix this with an update or give a solution it’s impossible to proceed the game!

I have the same Issue, didn't find a solution yet

I'm stuck in the same situation as well I've tried quitting and reloading and it does nothing I've also tried restarting the game it self not sure what to do at this point...

Texas measles outbreak reaches 90 cases; 9 cases in New Mexico - Ars Technica Darwin always finds a way.

This happened to me too. Did anyone find a solution?