[Note: Blood pool from poe1 has effect in poe2]

This is great! I hope there will be actual story consequences as well, though

Nah. Eothas tells you he won't judge you for it. It isn't a big deal.

[Main Story way too short for an RPG! I am very disspointed...]

Tela2k: agreed. These games are at their best in the side content. The main stories are really awful. Its pretty much obsidian's signature at this point.

 

Yes, the main story is ridiculously short and not very well written. All you really do is follow Eothas and have no power to affect the outcome at the end. It almost beggars belief that the same developer that gave us Fallout: New Vegas came up with this.

I always remember a different New Vegas: a lot of crap filler content, unmemorable characters, topped off by a really stupid and pointless, bullet sponge boss fight.

[Let‘s help the developers to balance the game]

Word "balance" in single player RPG is becoming the worse thing happening in gaming industry.....

Hardly. What the characters can do should be in step with each other, as should the opposition they face.

 

Doing otherwise hits required classes and lots and lots of party wipes. Or exactly what happens in this game: a complete lack of challenging or even engaging content.

 

I recently fought Nemnok, while at least 4 levels below him, and Pallegina managed to tank him for the entire fight, and never went under 75% health. And was still wearing her default un-upgraded armor, a +1 intellect amulet, and a greatsword she picked up in that dungeon, and that's it.

 

And that was the most difficult fight I've had so far.

 

Something is seriously wrong here.

[(Spoiler) My absolute biggest gripe with PoE2: Seemingly unfocused narrative]

 

That the side quests don't relate much to the main questline doesn't inherently bother me. What does bother me is that the main questline allowed for hardly any room for side quests to breath, which perhaps gets at part of what bothered you. After arriving in Neketaka it's a straight arrow to Eothas: you always know where to go next to track him, and there's little to no justification to get involved in anything else.

 

One of the ways they could have fixed this would be what you're hoping for. If they had made Eothas's whereabouts more of a mystery, then searching the islands and seas for him could have been a bigger deal. You could have had to do favors for these factions to either use their resources to help you search, or divulge information they already know.

 

But Eothas was a gargantuan marching impervious statue with a singular and simplistic goal in mind. Subtlety wasn't in the cards.

 

This is a narrative mistake most non-linear RPGs have been making for quite awhile. They give you giant worlds to play in but forget the issue of pacing; the main questline constantly urges you forward with all due haste, while the game simultaneously throws mountains of side quests at you without batting an eye. RPGs, especially ones like this, need the main quest written in such a way as to allow for exploration.

I dunno, I think they found a good compromise, with showing you right at the beginning, that you might be to weak. You have to do some quests, so you spend time with your environment and get sucked in. So the illusion of starting to live in the Archipelo is given. Not a bad solution and with Magran's Teeth we have an in-story reason, why we leave Eothas alone for a while.

Wait, what's showing your weakness? Combat is faceroll from waking up onwards.

 

There really isn't any reason not to chase the jolly green giant, and party dialogue (and NPCs) encourage you to so just that.

[The Watcher as a character after Deadfire]

Nah, the Watcher is a Chosen One, which helps make the story even more of a joke. The gods are desperate for you to help, and several talk to you personally about other things. (Hylea and Ondra). The game gives you every reason to think you matter, queens and power players just accept you showing up and inserting yourself into effectively global politics.

 

And them you just sit back as a witness to nonsense.

 

And this is an Epic Story that Changes the Entire World. (That hasn't had enough time to develop, much like DA or ME). Its... just a really terrible approach to the whole thing.

[Pallegina and the Kind Wayfarer ending...]

I never saw her make a choice. She always looked to me. 'Do your one &%$# job, messenger' just seemed obvious.

[Best weapon for Maia?]

 

If you go the blightheart route though, you'll want to multiclass Maia to a Wizard as the Wizard version of the weapon is a better damage stick than the ranger version.

> Wizard version of the weapon

 

?

Soulbounds are class based, and get different abilities and requirements.

[Pallegina and the Kind Wayfarer ending...]

Not sure what you mean: you made a choice, here are the consequences.

 

For the record- I swore to no god, and just shoved the souls back to the wheel. She seems perfectly happy.

[Please tell me that Durance is going to be in the DLC]

@spardeous- he wouldn't jump on the Eothasian bandwagon because, as he happily tells you, he got his jollies during the Purges torturing suspected Eothasians to insanity, death and the destruction of their souls.

 

And he regards the ones that got off with merely death as a personal failure.

 

He's about as tragic as the suicide of a genocidal maniac.

[is this game solid or I better wait?]

I don't care that much about it myself, but I'm not sure how the lead admitting they didn't bother makes it better.

 

Especially with all the import, dialogue, relationship and quest stuff that fell through the cracks of the extra month as well.

[What is your worst single-class in Deadfire?]

I'm so going to have to give ranger a try later because their skills do look interesting and some of the warbow/arquebus are reallllyyy good.

And they're even better in the hands of another class. I've got a great hunting bow for my cipher- gives action speed as an aura.

[Party Management / Moving in areas with several maps]

Eh. I don't find it grounded at all- more like eothas summons up battle-arenas around us for one dinky fight. At least that's my take since they decided to use his stars as the loading 'progress bar'

 

The old city is basically a bizarre exception when it comes to this game.

[Edér: What happened?]

He did feel fairly one note. He joked about pets a few times (and things that weren't actually pets), but beyond that... Eh. I thought his personal quest was going somewhere with a 'big reveal' but it turns out he just doesn't like some kid. Whatever.

[Ideas for a quick and dirty PoE3]

Is a poe3 even in the cards? Its pretty unusual for obsidian to stick to something.

[What is your worst single-class in Deadfire?]

I had significant problems with my cipher at first. Took too long to build focus- usually encounter was already finished by the time I built focus and then went through the casting time.

 

But at level 11? Completely different beast. Disintegrate requires one opening shot and then something in the back just dies. Or I can open with dominate, which completely swings fights.

 

Actual weakest? Ranger. Maia gets by as ranger\rogue, but ranger brings little beyond an extra body. Doesn't do the kind of damage the fox could do in PoE1, and if an enemy focuses on it, the bird dies.

 

Priest had been really good so far- defensive spells, spot healing and some really big nukes.

[Companion/Sidekick impressions]

My party settled into (with my watcher as a no-subclass cipher):

 

Eder as fighter\rogue. Useful, but mostly just a body. Persistent distraction helps.

 

Chokey, full priest. A few useful defensive spells, plus some full on nukes. Surprisingly tanky.

 

Maia, as ranger\rogue, which seems obvious. Mostly passive abilities and pet healing. Spams hobbling shot, and is fairly absurd with it. Does a lot of damage with a superb arquebus

 

Finally, pallegina, she who will not die. Paladin\chanter. Fantastic. Just tanked Nemnok while wielding a great sword and default armor and he was three skull red, never went below 75% health.

[[ENDING SPOILERS] The ending of Deadfire and what it means for The Lore]

I do think it's worth bearing in mind that we have absolutely no indications that the gods we interact with are even close to omniscient. I'd even go far enough to say that they don't really seem to know more than the Engwithans they used to be. 

 

I'd suggest they know less, but the Engwithans seem to have been a profoundly stupid, panicky people.

Well, we didn't find an absolute answer to the question of everything, time for the mass suicide ritual.  Fetch the kids.

 

 

 

@NocturnalTrance- 

 

I do think its badly written.  The side quests are fun.  But Obsidian's main storylines are consistently terrible, an incoherent mass of misunderstood, pithy tidbits from philosophy 101 courses, all the way back to KotoR2.    The watcher, gods and soul nonsense are pure gibberish with no relevance to anything.  There is a lot of human-relevant stuff in the faction conflicts, and had it focused on that and had a standard adventurer as a main character getting involved in a slowly deeping political mess, the game could have been amazing.  But it needed better pacing and didn't need the distraction of the 'main story' fragment.

 

But instead it loses track of the interesting bits in favor of incoherent fantasy navelgazing on souls, and forces the unexplained Chosen One to watch as impotent gods put on a very silly pantomime of failure.

[Enemy not dying: Ori no Kohiki]

So, following the painted mask quest, I came in the back way, and started cutting my way out through the village.  Sadly in several of these fights (first one at the southernmost part of the tree village, then after reloading at the doors, an enemy chooses not to die, and keeps attacking the party.  Unfortunately in this state they aren't targetable, and it isn't the same enemy every time.  First time was a random villager, second time was a pet lion.  

 

First time I've seen this, no idea as to the cause.

[Old City - did i screw myself?]

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.

He does.  And he leaves whatever that way is.  But for some reason, it isn't revealed to the player.  

There is also an area in the upper left corner of that last area (not including the pirate caves) that stayed unrevealed, despite a magnifying glass symbol I could see, but not click on (Though I'm used to that at this point.  Quite a few of those are touchy for some reason, and are only clickable from exactly the right spot).

[No Endless Paths style Dungeon in POE 2?]

as long as it's endless for real...cose the old dungeon..wasn't so endless...

Oh come on, don't you miss the 'levels' that are basically a landing between staircases?

[Recommendation for Console or PC?]

Console. The console sales will probably suffer the same fate as the first (one of the poporest seeling games on XB1/PS4 of all time.

 

And rightly so. Learning behavior is only successful if you reinforce the lesson, and not reinforce bad decisions.

[Armor Type and Damage Type - help pls]

Right, so in general, to so full damage, the Penetration stat of your weapon needs to equal or exceed the relevant armor stat (crush, Pierce, slash) of the target. For those constructs, when you meet them, they probably won't.

 

So, you have a couple choices (and potential combinations):

 

Equip weapons they are weak to (in practice, this means carry a main weapon and an alternate weapon that does the other two damage types).

 

Just plow through with the lower damage. I found this viable on classic, as they were largely incompetent attackers. Only thing requried was interrupting fan of flames.

 

have lot of lightning attacks. Ciphers and druids can be helpful here. Also empower.

 

Have abilities that can lower AR. Chanters, ciphers at a decent level, mace modal, a couple other things at high level.

 

Strip deflection and increase accuracy so you can crit a lot (which increases pen)

[A Man of Chimes quest, how do I save Giacolo?]

What are the answers needed to prevent Captain Tatzatl from killing Giacolo and ending up fighting the godlike pirates? I've tried what seem like the correct answers but nope.

 

Unless there really is no good ending here and it's all a sadistic game on Captain Tatzatls part.

Really fast CC should work as well. Dominate was just a touch too slow, but at least i forced him to kill one of his murder buddies.

 

It wasn't sadistic, exactly, but it was largely philosophical drivel so he could blame someone else for what he wanted to do.

[is this game solid or I better wait?]

I'd like to ask you if this game is:

1 perfectly playable without serious bugs.

2 well balanced. I remember PoE1 too easy when I played it.

 

Thanks in advance and congrats to obsidian for their success.

1) if you mean hardware-interface and software bugs, no, its largely fine, nothing serious. If you mean combat mechanics, quests, save imports and dialogs, there is a lot of weirdness and things not resolving the way they should.

 

2). Difficulty is not even in the cards. I'm currently in an area that is least four levels above me, and I'm face-rolling the entire complex, with stock npcs acting under their default AI (except the withdraw spell). And a general lack of gear, barring a few average pieces here and there.

 

Well, I started with a lack of gear, now its much better. I've upgraded weapons on several characters from the trash mobs in this place.

[How are the factions?]

 

 

I definitely choose the Vailian, everybody else is a slimy ****roach really. I can't stand any of them. The Vailians are FAAR from being good, but at least they are not pretentious **** trying to sell you that they are doing good here.

 

I will probably make a playthrough for Huana then Pirates after, but I just get sick from the Deadfire Company.

Eh. DTC seems to be the only rationale actors in the area. A few discrete 'tidying up' of details (and a few people) seems a lot better than wholesale murder/slavery, destruction of souls, and/or wide-scale repression and literally feeding the bulk of the population garbage (and just murdering the ones that fall ill).

Only if you think the colonization of India was a good thing (and if you do, you need to do some research into the state of india under British rule).

 

They're out and out there to conquer the deadfire, are purposefully racist and dismissive towards the inhabitants, and self assured of their own superiority. We have real world history that shows us where that goes, and it is extraordinarily unpleasant.

 

The Valians operate like a merchant republic. They aren't particularly interested in colonial rule. They want trade concessions, and they'll be ruthless about it, but they aren't in it to take over a place, and, ultimately, it leaves their control more fragile and less.... awful to the natives.

 

The natives are just... eh. They're ****, but they're **** in a way that is probably less dicking themselves than other people would **** them, because they're all **** in the end.

 

And the pirates are pirates. Like, yeah, they're bad people. Duh.

Eh. You're leaning too hard on real world history that isn't relevant (or even replicable in this setting- there isn't a major tech disparity, for one thing)and ignoring the fantastic elements that are extremely relevant. The adra and soul issues, which are major elements of what makes the valians and huana terrible, are far more pervasive than 'maybe the DTC will make the deadfire like India.' Somehow, despite the lack of similar conditions. Its actually more similar to Hawaii- either cultural absorption or irrelevance.

 

Though I understand why you might feel that the DTC is worse, and its a problem for the game as a whole. The DTCs cultural imperialism is relatable. The others, Like the main plot, arent relatable human issues, just fantasy gibberish with no staying power or relevance. Wacky soul theory and active gods (who don't act) and magic rocks that hold souls. It isn't the kind of thing that matters here, but would be a big deal there, far more impoetant than who owns which rock. And whether a terrible culture is erased by a sane one (which is the view the game presents- the huana feed their working population leftover rotting slop, and simply kill them when they fall ill)