mazeltov

The disadvantages of flaws are so enormous and their upside so tiny that I rejected every single one on Supernova. Except +25% shock damage, which I also came to regret later when corp troopers with ghostbuster guns were melting my 3k HP like it was butter. Was playing a strictly melee character. Most of the good perks are in the first tier anyway. Tiers 2 and 3 might have two good perks each. No reason to collect more perk points.

User-defined map waypoint please.

At first the falling damage seemed excessive, then I realized I had just been spoiled by ELEX's awesome jetpack. Fall damage is about normal for Fallout-type games.

Idea: Perks that give significant combat bonuses when wearing Light or Medium. Heavy is the obvious go-to for combat at the moment, the others are skill monkey suits that you keep in your duffle bag for spot use.

Companions add a nontrivial amount of DPS for encounters and the skill bonuses when properly perked are delicious. It's worth investing a lot into Determination for the massive health buff and micromanaging their combat settings and movement a bit.

2H melee tank on Supernova with max STR/TEM, everything else average. Heavy armor, lots of regen, and respectable damage between high Strength and Power Attacks. Main companion is Ellie for team survivability, with Max/Nyoko as ranged DPS. A key consideration for companions is that they have ranged ultimates; companions like Parvati with melee ultimates pull themselves out of cover and risk permadeath as a result.

The joy I felt when I discovered caffeinated drinks restore both thirst and tiredness.

Healing. And extra heals to heal my healers. My favorite strategy is to let enemies whack away at my party until they (the enemies) fall over dead from exhaustion. Paladin MC (regen aura, regen shield, regen ring, regen LoH) Pally Gina (regen chant) Tekehu (regen zone spell) Xoti (regen zone spell) Flex spot (DPS/Mechanics skill)

By all means. Though I don't think the various ways to use stealth in the game are cheesing necessarily. In an RPG it's nice to be able to circumnavigate certain obstacles instead of smashing into them head first.

FWIW the digsite fights and the arena interior fights can be snuck past; it only takes a single character touching Odierisi (sp) to trigger the outside despawning. I also do Gorecci street with a few pieces of Fine gear and companions from Nekky. Easy breezy, wet and sleazy, as Serafen says.

Bonus Accuracy, bonus damage, full attack, tier 3 Affliction, sets up Sneak Attack... SeemsGoodMan. For my septim it was the best Rogue spammable even before the patch.

Balance Man is a helluva drug.

It's nice that one of the cardinal rules of rpgs is becoming relevant again with this patch: geek the mage first.

It's strange how things like skellies are usually immune to mind-affecting stuff, but turn/rebuke/command undead always seemed like mind-affecting abilities to me. Raise your holy symbol and skellies go scurrying in "fear."

Familiarity breeds contempt. The gods were too chummy and too everpresent, constantly making phone calls to my ship while my Watcher was trying to enjoy her Caribbean vacation. Obsidian should go ahead and exhaust the Engwithan gods storyline in the DLC and then move on to other subjects if they ever do a PoE 3.

Sure. That's the way Balance Man proceeds over a looong time frame. Remember how long it took to get PoE 1 to its 3.0 state, and how many things were nerfed, buffed, and nerfed again along the way? Whole attributes and skills (e.g. Athletics) completely changed in function over geological balance iteration cycles. The same thing happened with New Vegas over a time span of years. Launch was really the beginning of open beta for this game, and the work of polishing it up is only now under way.

DoC breastplate + that Falcon's (sp) helm is a very attractive combo! Looks well armored, but not over armored; appropriate for a tropical setting, I think. Conquistador-ish.

PSA the beta patch is out, with a lot of unadvertised item and ability changes etc.

There are a couple of items for sale in Sacred Stair that add up to +45 Defl. vs. Disengagement attacks, +25% movespeed, and the ability to cast Escape when bloodied.

Can't help that the launch price point is higher than it should be. There isn't $50 worth of game here. $50-55 for the base game and season pass would be more reasonable.

Shieldbearer Pally main tank, Eder tanky DPS Swashbuckler, Maia Ranger musketeer, Tekehu support/DPS Druid, Xoti support Priest. Was able to talk my way around many fights, including boss fights, with a triple 18 spread of dialogue attributes on the MC. The fights that did occur were straightforward tank and spanks for the most part. -- My second playthrough party, planned for when the big patch drops, has a Bleaker/Devoted pistolero leading with all four sidekicks bringing up the rear. No pesky companion dispositions to get in the way of evil actions and quest resolutions!

Looking at a log from the final fight (vs. RDC), Ishiza was grazing the boss for 17 Slashing, counting the passive damage amps on top of +45% damage scaling from being level 16. Average base damage roll was around 12. Ishiza has low Might, so that hurts his damage a bit, and he has a highish base armor of 8. If the devs took a short cut and stuck a creature version of armor on pets, that could be why their action times suffer. As it stands they seem pretty effective as damage supplements and as off tanks, and of course as extra bodies they get better the more buffs your party throws around.

+95% passive damage amp from talents has to be abusable in some way. Wounding Shot itself triggers +50% pet damage, Flanking the target activates the other conditional +30%. If Ghost Heart companion counts as a summon, it could benefit from Animancy Cat's summon buffs.

Of the four I brought along, Xoti was my fav (she's the new Eder). Lots of setting and story interaction, interesting tormented personal storyline, funny battle barks. And I like her cute southern accent. I felt Eder wasn't very effective this time around. He kept emphasizing his old shtick, but it's kind of played out now and Shorty covers a lot of the same ground. Plus Eder's more jaded and that makes his aw shucks persona a bit less genuine. The others companions I used, Tekehu and Maia, mostly for the purposes of setting interaction, were serviceable 7/10 characters who each had their unique upsides, performed well in their roles, and responded predictably and sensibly to the situations we ran across in the Deadfire. Would definitely recommend them for anyone who wants a dedicated factional representative of Huana/RDC in their party.

Move some of the uniques in chests to Sleight of Hand targets with good stealth detection. The loot from named NPCs that I got with SoH was pathetic. Think the most valuable thing was a spyglass.