Phyriel

Or demilich.

Holy crap Sun and Moon also have enchant "33% chance to recast fire spell/attack after 0.5 sec". This gotta be auto include item for fire nukers - high level priests, meteor wizards

You empower some big late game 6sec (base) nuke and drop it from stealth into group of enemies to KO most of them with your alpha strike. That's not a bug per se. Just lame way to play a game but I'm not judging:) Although if a build guide specify that this type of playing is required then I'd admit its not a proper guide. I'd like builds for potd to be tested as valid for fair'n'square encounters, without resetting combat or splitpulling mobs etc.

Just remove monk from the game in next patch and release him again after it's closer to normal class than to cheat. Its not even swift flurry, I did few test runs up to level 10-13 with multiple tier 1 damage/dps classes and monk outshines everything as dps and its not even close, my monks had often 35-40k damage while other tier 1 dpses like 10k tops. Single class monk at high level is probably even more retarded than multiclassed (give him a chanter with replenish resources gg). T There are some other broken combos like priest/pala with chanter that becomes immortal... forever... from level 13 onward. With pala its atleast somewhat bad dps but with priest you can get +fire powerlevel items, use death godlike and spam empowered rain of blue fire that hits for close to 200 damage on fampyrs at level 15 in huge aoe. I'd say its not yet time to balance items. Whole classes need to be rebalanced and this ultimate broken **** has to go away... right now balance is like in Tyranny where you were able to assemble dragonball level of damage already in early/mid game and you didn't even need any items to do that. Same in poe 2 atm. Its hard to get immersed if you can faceroll so much with every second class.

Book of Storms doesn't have anything unique about it tho I think? Its found on island south with Amira ruins or sth like that. There is a mage there with skeletons and demiliches.

I used it 24/7 at its level range. I'm playing duo death godlikes priest of bereth + troubadour chanter. Its a slow duo to start with so this charm made things both safer and faster once skeletons became a bit too slow for midgame encounters. I'm at level 14 now with this duo so its a faceroll. At 13 you get this invocation that regenerate resources so with barring death door from priest and casting 2-3 times a priest spell that prolongs buffs by 10s base (with max int and +3 powerlevel from death godlike near death state it jumps quite a bit up so don't need to spam that much). I then use chanter summon animated weapons and priest spams spells like those blue flames from the sky. I'm immortal so I can just stay in it and faceroll everything. Totally broken btw. I dont know if there are any enemies that dispel buffs with more efficiency, so far only magranites at steel preacher tried to remove my buffs but they got rekt in 2 seconds so by animated weapons so... Its nice rpg build btw - playing immortal because Bereth herself makes you unable to join the wheel as long as you're her Herald and got a job to do. P.S about charm, I liked to use it more on their ranged if possible. They packed enough punch to make it worth (also saving me from burst which was the only thing that could kill me, high dps I could deal with but burst cought me offguard few times from a salvo from 4+ gunners), they also have low deflection so sometimes enemies aggroed to them? Might've seen wrong, dunno if uncharmed enemies aggro to their charmed "allies" as a rule of thumb.

The more I think about this whole subject the more I'm leaning towards thoughts about games that become feature heavy. I mean if it was a sandbox game like Skyrim where u're tossed in a world and have some bare bones quests and tutorial to give you general idea what the world is about but in the end you kinda have to forge your own version of "fun" in them. I get a feeling (even tho I'm completely fine with that as meat and potatos of the game is enjoyable - char theorycrafting, how the combat feels in general, setting etc) they tried to provide themed means of travel to make players connect to the whole "new world" aesthetic a bit more (the thing that you have fog of war and you have to go and see places for yourself). It really is appealing the first time you do it when you sail across open sea and then a corner of a land appears. It's like a touch of sandbox but I think that's why it ultimately fails to deliver. It's like if you play a game and you get a glimpse of sandbox you instantly want more (so back again to my argument about expectations). It baits you into believing its a "real deal" system but it actually remains a mini game to smoothe out the edges of the setting itself. I hope tho that they don't back away from that system into more poe 1 travel where you just have a map with clickable locations and that's it. They way the done it in poe 2 is uncharted territory for them but imagine if they improve on sandbox aspect in a classic isometric rpg. Woah, the dream come true. Last game that tried to bring that feeling was probably ultima.

I agree on one part tho but thats another topic entirely... a lot of islands are ****ing boring holy ****. Seriously they packed like 10+ islands that have nothing on them. A pond with 21 water and some gay rice farm to vendor your crap? wtf is the purpose of jam packing the world map with empty zones. Imagine in poe 1 if you had a full zone size of i dunno... district of Defiance Bay with just some berries on a bush and a wandering generic "Lonesome Merchant" that sells flint and tinder + camping supplies. People would flip the table having extra loading screens just to explore empty zone... this is what those empty ****ing islands do to me.

I too, hate when people try to excuse or justify the poor ship combat/mechanics with the lie of "Ships were intended as a stronghold, not for combat" especially when Obsidian stated different so many times. There are no excuses here on my side even tho I justify a lot of it with valid arguments, apparently its only "poor" if you expect more than a mini game from it. I don't, I consider it just a mini game with a bonus (especially that you got option to just go straight into regular combat with your chars which is bread and butter of this game) and I find it does the job it ought to do as a mini game just right. I never saw Obsidian stating that they will make in depth naval simulator (which for many would also be not fit into rpg game where they want rather to rpg than play strategy game).

Yes there is the cool idea to travel AND battle ship. Few people pretend to mix the things. I LIKE the idea of free travel with ship. MORE, than caed nua. Caed Nua was only really useful with free rest with boost. But the portative-stronghold idea is a different thing than the textual battle mini-game between two ships. Frankly guys, I sincerely hope Obsidian will change deeply battleship with DLC. For me It is the priority. I'd want extra options for traveling in case I wanted to sell my ship and not use it at all ;p Then i'd have to find some maps in dungeons for uncharted territories so I could hire some ship to get me there etc.

That's why a concept card was the best idea. Battle ship is absolutely boring. Even people said they "like" this feature, they describe a routine absolutely boring jibe > fire > jibe > fire. Short, it is invasive and not interresting. A card game, more conceptual but also far more fun was THE solution. A tray with square. Token with effect. Moving with bonuses. Eventually call others ship in the tray (factions etc.) For a real battle ship, strategic and interresting. War of position, of passive and active ability. Passive : +25 % of speed sailing during 1 tour. Active : Shoot 2 cannonball one turn and reload for 2 turns. Each crew member with an ability (active and passive) more than a role. A COLLECTION of crew member more precious than others with unique abilities. (rank gold for example, like unique card in gwent). And you have a beginning of interrest. But here, this is simply not interresting. If it was like that I'd probably use console to teleport around islands because I truly detest mixing RPGs that are mainly about char/party development, dungeon crawls and some story, dialog experiences with some weird strategy, turn based mini games inside them (card game? seriously? maybe also busting some card packs open for legendary sails and cannons Hearthstone style?). I mean maybe stop being ass about naval combat not being entire extra game and rather compare it to poe 1 hmm? It does so much more in terms of what it does to immersion than just bland click to travel -> loading screen -> you're there of poe 1, it actually gives you a choice how you wanna approach it, I for one don't like shooting cannons or engage in that crap, I got different games for that so I have a ship that allows me to just crash into others and cut to the boarding phase asap (but for that I had to spend some gold for a sturdy ship). So by giving you that choice it also becomes a valid gold sink, especially early game when you'd want that gold for enchants / vendor pieces that cost like 13k+. Compare it to what it achieves versus poe 1 stronghold instead of picturing some extra full game inside poe 2 that is complete in-depth simulator to fulfill your dreams of naval theme done right.

Haha yeah, if they did we'd probably have to clean cannons ourselves in real time with a mini game that looks something like opening locks in Skyrim or if it was text/dialog based then we'd need excel spreadsheets to have 0.12233454% (exactly) chance of survival ( Leeroy Jenkins ref ). Derp.

It's a matter of expectations I guess. I never expected naval system in poe to be a thing that would rival with depth of char creation and land combat. I treated it as a immersive way to travel around and free up the player from otherwise nightmarish system (imagine if you had to travel to port area of every city/island, then move to NPC that sells trips to various islands and travel that way). In addition as far as a mini game with some soft management cherry on top it does the job nicely I'd say.

Sunless Sea falls more into category of management games like Frostpunk (from the recent ones) than a fully fledged rpg. I mean you bring a good point of game where naval theme is in depth and engaging but you bring a game that is entirely built around that, that's not a very valid solution for poe 2 in which use of naval theme is more a mini game and immersive way to travel around the world.

I don't understand why people dislike naval systems, it has pretty much everything this game consist - it has scripted dialog arcade thingy, it has combat, it has resource management (supplies, crew, ship inventory) and it provides immersive way to travel around. I mean it would be kewl if we had real time ship combat that includes animations for shooting cannons, boarding and all naval maneuvers but lets be real here:) It's pretty much as good as it gets. I mean how would you do it differently before it turns into some Sea of Thieves pirate simulator? Especially after you compare it to stronghold from poe 1 that was just a money sink and adventures were click and forget kinda thing. I liked one thing with stronghold, and that was a quest vs this baron that wanted it back which resulted in big ass battle. That one thing was kewl, rest was just a waste of time and money (which didn't matter at the end anyway because money was useless and you couldn't spend it all even if you wanted). Stronghold became just a poor justification for some quests later on like "Go and deal with Torn Bannerman because they are surely gonna come here after dealing with Cancelhaut ". Ship and the inconvenience that come with early naval adventures makes fine use of your money, it costs a lot to outfit a ship to such a degree that it makes you safe on seas so you have to make a choice - enchant your gear and buy some expensive vendor pieces early or outfit ship and have much more freedom to sail here and there. About ship combat in boarding phase... when I hear arguments that its too hard when literally half of these boards whine "combat in the game is trivial" i die a little bit inside.

Or roll a shattered pillar or a wizard;p About aggro, enemies tend to target chars with lowest deflection, you can cheese around it by equiping biggest shield possible on your damage dealer at start of combat while unequiping shields on your tanks. Sure this way your tanks will suffer alpha strikes more but they are still probably gonna survive as they wear heavier armor, got more hp and higher defenses. Once alpha strikes are done you can switch to your dps set on your damage dealers and to shields/whatever setup you're running on your tanks. By the time enemies will understand what happened you'll probably down some of them and squeeze through otherwise tight encounter. But by all means listen to first advice first (wizard = arcane veil + chillfog = easy life early game, if you roll nature godlike wizard even easier with infuse with vital essence, if you roll blessings of bereth *achievement points thingy* then grab gloves for +2 evocation spells power level from vendor that spawns in port maje and disregard what I said about chillfog and just blast everything with missiles spells, evocation nukes). With monk... shattered pillar + devoted build him for hit to crit conversion and flurry strikes + rooting pain + cleaving stance. Single class shattered pillar is probably even more powerful but not as easy early game as multiclassed.

In Temple of Ondra in Old City Ruins under Nekataka. If you play solo and you engage in combat with this boss, sometimes he instantly uses his swallow ability but animation doesn't go off and you're perma locked in some weird knockdown status where you stood but your char model is gone. Another issue is that they need to make doors close behind you once you engage this boss because as it is you can just throw spells from outside of his range (he doesn't move) and once you run out of spells you can just run back to ruins, wait for combat to drop and you can run back to the boss with your spells refilled but his hp regen is too slow so he's never fully healed. In my solo wizard at level 10 on potd my full spells + 2 summons took him to nearly dead and after doing what I just described and coming back he was at badly damaged, 1 spell took him to nearly dead again. I know you're not supposed to cheese in that way but its different if you have to use some certain abilities to drop combat etc, then it would fall into clever use of game mechanics and different if the boss is immobile and you can just run off and come back 10 seconds later.

I'm gonna roll this priest + chanter combo. Will be hard up till late midgame tho:P

As in title. Is it intended of bug? Currently I can precast it before I enter combat.

Its not only the setting that is more cheerful but evil rpg aspect is gone pretty much, I haven't found anything comparable to poe 1 sending a child to be devoured by a dude on top of defiance bay tower for extra stats or sacrificing one of your party member in gruesome skaen effigy ritual. Its not just the setting of deadfire, its like a different universe in which your char, if it was evil in poe 1 it can no longer be as evil in deadfire. I have a really hard time roleplaying as evil sadistic monk type having no evil story companions to choose from, all story companions so far are a merry squad trading jokes and having their soft dramas. The most evil you can get in dialog options is a grumpy indiana jones on his bad day... thats about it tbh.

To be fair that book has a negative on it, if i recall correctly. Every damage you eat interrupts spellcasting, so you better buff that wizard well or keep him out of harms way. Oh that explains a lot;) I thought that it adds interrupt to your damage, but you are right, since I started using that book I was getting interrupted much more, I thought its just regular interrupt that you get occasionally from enemy attacks but I guess i'll be getting rid of that book for now then:P

Yeah what I said earlier: Eothas is just a McGuffin for you to roam around Deadfire and get involved in interesting stuff. Not the most exciting critical path, but at the same time not a bad thing by itself. I know of an even worse RPG than Deadfire though:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tlxRCi9OvZo Inb4 you get crucified for touching fallout, holy grail of all rpgs! But I agree with you lol. Classic rpgs developed some sort of double standards, we treat old rpgs like fallout or baldur's with awe and we tend to idealize them but towards newer creations we're approaching it with guns raised. I mean its not very fair, sure expectations can only go higher but I'm very grateful for the eye candy that comes with deadfire. I know story and char development used to be main bag of potato for these kind of games but you gotta understand that nowadays companies have to make games look good. Imagine if pillars 1 was done in baldur's gate graphics but made 20% longer with maybe better writing... it wouldn't grow as big as it is. My bet is it would be criticized for being "mere bg clone that tries to cash on old ideas".

WIth Blessings of Bereth you can start with main char wizard at level 4, extra gold,+2 all stats and vendor that sells gloves with +2 power level to evocation spells in Port Maje. Mix that with Infuse with Vital Essence Nature Godlike for another +2 power levels and you are probably highest damage dealer at level 4. Chillfog ticking for 37 damage in big aoe that also blinds? I would understand if you called that imbalanced but weak or worst? Nah, you just haven't found enough game breaking **** that make wizard strong. I just hinted you one above. I'm sure there are more. So now those blessings, and race are exclusive to the Wizard? Also, not only have I already mentioned empower, I mentioned Chill Fog. Twice now, and you can't use it every fight. Not every enemy is going to bunch up and stand perfectly still for you, especially early on when you're using a tank that can only hold three enemies at most. Ranged enemies generally don't bunch up with melee either, so you're either hitting melee, or you're hitting ranged, but not both. It also makes using any class that has a flanking bonus way more obnoxious to micromanage than they need to be if the blind gets resisted, because either they won't be getting their damage bonus, or you risk blinding/damaging them as well. Are you telling me that for every fight, if there's any kind of corner or choke point, you try to draw the attention of ALL of the enemies, and then run them all the way back to that point (if they all happen to aggro, since often when you do that half of them don't move) just to make good use of Chill Fog (and then later Fireball)? If so, you're going out of your way to set up a scenario that puts the Wizard in a way better light than what actually shines on them right now. For the time it takes to do that, you could have already killed at least half of the enemies or more through other means. Things start looking different if you're talking about stacking multiple Wizards, but the same is true for a few other classes too, especially stuff like a Black Jacket/Ascendant or Devoted/Soul Blade, or how about 2x - 3x Barbarians? BTW, those gloves don't affect all spells, only Evocations. Chill Fog is a Transmutation. The gloves slightly boost the damage output early on with Fan of Flames (should you bother using it) and Missile, but inconsequentially so. The best thing about them is the accuracy boost. Edit: Is the difficulty level of the game even being considered here? Despite it still not being very challenging, enemy health pools scale up a little more on Veteran and then PotD don't they? I'm playing solo so I'm not having muchos problemos with wizard friendly fire. You points are valid but they state only that wizards don't work as good in melee centric comps so its more composition related issue than wizard itself. Anyway I don't dig your argument about how bad it for wizard vs other means because he's not equally autopilot class and can't just derp in half of his arsenal like other classes. I'm roleplaying this game to a bigger degree I suppose so I don't mind doing clever even if time consuming things while playing a wizard to make him shine. About your issue with mobs placement, go and experiment with Pull of Eora, its insane in deadfire. I'm not saying those gloves are best item but they truly made my early game a breeze paired with nature godlike, I just put Infuse with Vital Essence, drop Ray of Fire on some stationary target (archer, caster), kite a bit back and drop chillfog between him and me so melees get blinded and get damage by both chillfog and ray, it sounds complicated by seriously the damage with 4 more power levels early on just makes things die super fast. Later once you get to Nekataka you can steal/buy grimoire of vaporous wizardry that give damage from spells an interrupt effect and it also gives you more spell uses per encounter. At level 10 now I can use 3x (level 1 -4) 2x (level 5) and got 3 empowers, you can easily abuse Withdraw scrolls to reset many encounters if you run out of juice but I haven't so far. I honestly don't know how can you say wizards are bad, maybe they don't fit your playstyle cause you like to autopilot on AI more or they just don't compliment your party composition and that would be fair to say but to say they are bad, I respectfully disagree on that bit. Even if you want more autopilot wizard you can build one that is focused on quick cast no recovery selfbuffs that buff up in blink of an eye with veil + infuse + spell reflect and then cast citzal lance + martial power and go ham in melee alongside with your regular barbarians, devoted cleavers etc

Can't say much about Deadfire's story, but to me the PoE story only got good in retrospect... I mean, even if the "twist" isn't really imaginative, it has interesting context throughout the game. Many of the main story beats, as well as the side stuff, get quite some more depth, once the ending rolls around. Also, the world and characters had just the right balance of familiar and strange... but that, again might just be me. Yeah during the actual game it was meh. That said at least White Mach was compelling all the way through and showed the learned something. I was really so so on it. If I hadn't clicked with Eder and Aloth I probably would've dropped it when I reached Gilded Vale. I think the cast of characters is what saved it for me too. I wasn't really drawn into the story - possibly because events that happened in a previous life don't work as a personal motivation (?). Yeah and it's not like you and Thaos were even that close to each other. He was just your leader so it's not even like you're chasing down your friend/brother/lover from a past life to get answers about why they screwed you over. It really doesn't help that the relationship isn't explained til near the final stretch either. Most of my favorite villains have a very personal hook to the player (Irenius, Li, Malak, so on). So when they screw you over there's an actual hook. Thaos lacked that severely. Like the past life thing can work...but it has to be someone close to you then and whose close to you know. And Thaos failed on both those fronts. I like your point but fundamental issue with that is that its centered around the character, your problem becomes center of the game universe because its so epic and emotionally driven. I learned to appreciate that approach but its so drama queen when you think about it. I like it that in poe games you're just nobody who traveled the world and **** happened. Then you have your little Awakening problem but you don't understand it and you get to understand it through other characters problems - Maedwald insanity that gives you a glimpse of what will eventually happen to you, empathy towards Lady Hadret and her chase after Thaos and then that scene in which Thaos kills her, showing that she, even after over 200 years of plotting against him and undermining his agenda felt like maybe there was a chance he loved her and the simple "no, you were just a tool" that she read in his mind just as he stabbed her with a dagger. I like it more if you can see the antagonist from a backseat and decide if you want to empathize experiences of other characters, whos lifes Thaos shaped and destroyed or... you can choose to give a damn only about yourself and your sickness. First approach gives you much richer story experience because that's how narrative is designed, if you choose to experience the game thinking player is the center of it all then you're right to be disappointed as the game narrative places MC just as one of many important puzzles. That's why I think poe story is very good, it places player in more realistic place towards the universe instead of being soap opera from the start to finish.

Who said main story should be long? There is no standard in a genre saying it should be XX hours or its bad. I'm very happy with the game as a whole, we get an much more dynamic world with day, night cycles, stunning graphics and effects for that kind of game, much of the content is voiced. I'm happy to give up some of the main story length for more immersive world as a whole as it provides great platform for later dlcs to expand on game length.