flamesium

Same for me on 1440x900. Item comparisons go off the screen, combat ‘shift’ calculations windows overlap, the character/enemy status window in combat extends down ‘behind’ the portraits so it can’t be read...

Crew healing works for me. Have you dragged the injured crew members to the rest area?

Neketake is incredible. It doesn’t feel ‘too big’ once you get to know your way around. I would maybe recommend doing quests as you receive a couple though, when you first arrive. Don’t feel like you have to scour every inch of the city and collect every possible quest before heading out again. That’s what leads to the solid mass of talking.

There are loads of opportunities for having Xoti collect souls as you go along. If you never have her with you maybe you’ll struggle, but you don’t need to fret about collecting every single one.

Will the Level Scaling fix work for games in progress? Or only new games?

This mouse clicking problem can be solved by turning off Steam Overlay. It's the top option in Steam settings > In Game. I just started getting this issue today and the above fixed it. I also notice my Barbarian now has a dotted circle when I target someone, which I assume is the Carnage AOE range, so there's definitely been an update of some kind I think.

I think it improves the feel of combat, but it's disproportionately limiting in terms of party and quest interaction. It's not so much that it's a drop from 6 to 5 party members. Assuming most people like to have a core team of 3 or 4 party members pretty much locked in, it's the drop from 3 to 2, or 2 to 1 'luxury' party members, which is significant.

The modals are to give you more tactical flexibility (or for very specific builds) rather than to just a straight improvement. I think it's a great system but we won't really see the worth of it until the difficulty is boosted enough to bring them into play. In theory, against tough enough enemies, it should be well worth sacrificing a little speed or damage with one character in order to lower a specific defensive rating and make the target easier for the rest of the party to hit. Pike's modal for instance looks like it could be really useful against tough enemies. If the game had any tough enemies in it. Or any pikes.

Does it still happen even at the start of a fresh game? I wonder if it could be linked to the Curse bugs.

I only played through PoE 1 once, and that was recently and on Normal difficulty. Deadfire Veteran ‘Only Scale Up’ is significantly easier than that was.

I like it, but yeah no reason for it not to be on a volume slider.

Having stealth activated is no longer necessary to spot things, thank Wael.

It feels like the Caed Nua Crew have gone on vacation. I’m into it. Deadfire still has its fair share of dark moments, plus the more mundane insidiousness of the major factions exploiting the region, but it’s not as relentlessly bleak as PoE was. It doesn’t quite stray into the openly pantomime territory Larian is so fond of, but it’s not taking itself quite as seriously as PoE did either. In a way I think that balance gives the setting more weight if anything. The Dyrwood seemed such a terrible place to live that Thaos was probably doing everyone a favour. The world has to be worth saving to make saving the world mean anything.

Difficulty being balanced right is critical. Every aspect of the intricate combat system goes straight out the window if the difficulty is too low. When the difficulty is right the combat system sings. The main cause of the trouble is they've designed the Armour / Pen system in such a way that the sweet spot between 'trivial' and 'very difficult' is tiny. The tail off from Pen to No Pen is still much too steep to allow any margin for error in encounter design. They've left themselves very little margin for error. I'm playing Veteran with 'Only Scale Up' on 'All' and I'd say the difficulty feels 'right' for Veteran maybe every 1 in 5 fights and I assume these are when I've wandered into areas I'm underleveled for. The majority of fights feel trivial (as in, no real need to change weapons, stances, use consumables or worry about what the enemy is doing) which shouldn't be the case with these difficulty settings.

Multiclassing is awesome but you do need to have an aim in mind for what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re just randomly picking abilities from the two classes because you like the multiclass name then yes you are likely to end up with a weaker build than if you’d stuck to single class. And when people say ‘just have another party member buff you’, you have to factor in the opportunity cost of that.

I think the Rogue passives make a lot of great multiclasses. As for actives, Confounding Strike is a useful utility skill. Gouging Strike too if you have a ranger in the party. A junior version of Whispers of the Wind which temporarily lowers Armour instead of doing damage would be a fun addition.

Seems like it's true for all the named targets in this quest

...without killing him.

Use the Wizards deflection buffs (Wizard’s Double, Arcane Shield, Mirror Image etc) combined with Riposte from rogue and he is excellent in melee. With deflection so high he is hard to hit in melee, and when the enemy swings and misses Riposte gives you a free attack.

Exit via the top right of the outdoors screen, where you first entered Fort Deadlight. You must gather your party before venturing forth.

When you hit rest you get a screen with companions on the left and your list of food on the right. You just need to drag an item across to each companion. Note that if you rest at an Inn you just get whatever the room benefits are, no food assignment.

I believe this has been confirmed as not working as intended.

Aloth as Spellblade is excellent for this btw. Wizard has a handful of cheap, powerful and virtually instant (no recovery time) deflection buffs. I like it with Hatchets as they have deflection boost built in, and the modal reduces enemy accuracy. I use dual wield because basically all of the rogue actives are full attacks.

I’m not 100% sure because I didn’t use it but I vaguely remember another way out on the northern edge of one of the old city screens. Did you find the lost adventurer in the top right of the first area with the lift? He talks about getting out via a river or something.

I think 5 works great for combat but it feels too restrictive when you’re trying to take people who would have an interest in a specific quest. Honestly wouldn’t mind having an optional ‘animancy walkie talkie / hologram’ or something so the companions left back on the ship can still chip in with banter or quest chat. I don’t have time to play the game over and over to see that stuff. The UI is still a mess with 5 companions so I’m not sure that’s a legit reason for the cap.