Yakmann

One option would be to hire some adventurers (custom companions) in the Port Maje tavern. I did it for my recent POTD runthrough (MC Arcane trickster/skald) and it was a big help; I made a Shieldbearer/Unbroken, a Barabrian, and another I've forgotten. Other than that, don't be shy to use all available resources, especially Empower (but also grenades, potions, scrolls etc - you'll find enough to replace them).

Concerning the Crafting/Enchanting discounts: I've taken a quick look and so far I can say this: Components (like Gunpowder, Reagents etc.) do not seem to be discounted, only the gold cost is. With the blessing, quality upgrades for weapons and armor cost the following: Fine = 800, Exceptional = 4000, Superb = 12000, Legendary = 24000. For comparison, the original prices are 1000 / 5000 / 15000 / 30000. Other enchantments (just looked at St. Drogga's Skull and Saint's War Armor) are discounted from 3000 to 2400. Crafting a grenade now costs 160 gold instead of 200, a Potion of Major Healing 200 instead of 250. So all in all, the blessing seems to reduce gold cost by 20%.

I believe Divinity.OS 2 does this much worse. Deadfire is fine, since there's still a great disparity in presentation between martial skills and spells. In BG2 I always thought of it this way: I wasn't really playing one character, but a single group. So it didn't bother me that fighters were weaker than spellcasters, since they were still valuable to the group. Deadfire seems to go for an approach where every character is more or less equally powerful.

A Vithrak, a fampyr and a Xaurip would all be welcome. Ogres would probably bother me in the long run because of their size. But yeah, generally non-kith races would be a great and intersting alternation.

Yeah, that dagger's binding choice is weird. Rogue I get, but priest and paladin?

The OP part was mostly subclass-abilities (ascendant state and Soul annihilation, the latter making most other shred spells redundant) and some individual spells (Time parasite especially, eyestrike probably too low powerlevel). I personally think that especially high-level Cipher powers are lackluster - weak, very situational, and generally just too few. Early level shred abilities never felt worthwile to use in the mid game, because the damage was too low (especially if you play as a soulblade; in the later stages I only used soul annihilation or desintegrate) - for this I don't understand why they didn't introduce upgrades for abilities, like they did with many other classes (for exaple chanter). I think some abilities need to be reworked and redistributed in the powerlevel-scala (including maybe some upgrade paths); a few new high level abilities should be added; ascendant state and soul annihilation need to be reworked. I don't think we need faster focus generation (esp. not with the option to take biting whip).

I'd wait for the combat-difficulty patch; I personally had a hard time getting any enjoyment out of the combat in it's current state, since I found them too easy even on POTD. Even better would be to wait for the DLCs, since they will hopefully introduce some in-depth content outside of Neketaka so the Deadfire feels less... shallow.

Having played Splintered Reef yesterday, I say it's probably the best dungeon in the game. It's actually telling a story, somewhat intertwined with other stories in the game. And I personally found the fights comparatively challenging.

I generally like Johnson's narration, except when it's right inside other figures dialogues - so that we switch from an ingame character (like Berath) talking to some meta-game entity (the narrator) talking, back to the ingame character. I like narration on passages without any dialogue, but not narrated prose inside of dialogue - especially not all this "he/she says" etc stuff.

I personally prefer the ship to Caed Nua, at least from a gameplay perspective. The Caed Nua stuff wasn't very engaging. And the ship combat is ok, certainly better than the Caed Nua attacks. I just wish there was more to do with the ship - apart from the bounty quests, I think only one quest really involves your ship directly (transporting cargo). It just feels like the necessary vehicle for travel, and no more meaningful than just walking. From all the talk around it, I expected it to be more involving and involved.

I agree. Since most of the dungeons are so short (some are really just one room), there's no real opportuny for atmosphere to be built. It's usually one level, with an item and/or fight at the end, with maybe 2-3 letters explaining something about the place. These are done in 15-20 minutes, maybe half an hour if you go slow. In the end every dungeon just feels... pointless. Honestly, the Defiance Bay Catacombs had more to offer than every dungeon I found in Deadfire so far, except maybe the Old City. And it's really sad, because the setting for many dungeons is really interesting, like the underwater Engwithan ruin, or Drowned Barrows, or the fortress at Ashen Maw. But because they are all very small and usually only have one goal/one thing to do, they are over and done before any real atmosphere is built. It seems like they took the opposite approach compared to unique items: There are less of them, but they're more fleshed out compared to the first game's uniques; but dungeons we have more, but they're less fleshed out, whereas in Pillars one most dungeons were pretty different, memorable and had several things going on.

I personally preferred the combat music of the first game. This one's is very, very repetetive.

I'm currently also having the problem that, as soon as I enter the Brass Citadel (to do Maia's quest there), she starts dialogue and I can't tell her that I don't want to blow up the powderhouse. I also can't/couldn't tell Director Castol I don't want to do it. So now I can't complete Maia's sidequest, and the game's forcing me into decisions I didn't make.

I'm running a Barbarian/Soul Blade, and she's completely eclipsing everyone else in terms of damage. You just have to find a roll for your chracter, and use abilities that complement those of your group.

I had this problem as well, on a R9 270X, and mitigated it with overwriting the game's AA in the AMD Settings. Got me a large FPS boost, and the game runs smoothly for the most part. In larger fights with lots of effects I still get massive fps drops, though. (i5 2400 & R9 270X & 8GB DDR3 @1440p)

Had the same Problem just now. Though the cursor disappears, you should still be able to press the "end dialogue" button - just try moving your (invisible) cursor in that general direction and try to hit it. That solved it for me.

Disabled the Hamachi-Adapter in my Network Configuration, seems to have solved the problem. Didn't need to deactivate my Internet Connection.