xzar_monty

There is little need to upgrade your ship for ship to ship combat, if you are not doing ship to ship combat. If you were to use ship combat system, other ships pack more firepower - Galleon or Junk can disable enemy ship in a single volley. Incidentally, I just went to that guy in Neketaka who sells ships, and the prices are exorbitant. If you get the best possible ship and equip it as best you can, I wonder if you can make it work, financially. I suppose you can, the game is probably designed that way, but the prices are really something. I'm at level 15, and I haven't seen that much extra money just lying around (which is good). For instance, there's a really good firearm available in the Brass Citadel, and even that is something you really have to save money for.

Queen Onekaza's rooftop court is, in my view, graphically the most saistfying thing in these two games. It's stunning. There's clearly a difference in the overall aesthetics: PoE was darker in every sense, whereas there's plenty of colour and vim in Deadfire. I like both, but in terms of variety, there's more success in Deadfire.

Verde: I am sorry but the clear and obvious implication is only in your head, i.e. it does not exist. That kind of thing where you first erroneously infer something and then have the gall to claim you are 100% correct is quite dangerous, psychologically speaking. I really wouldn't do it. Here's the thing: I know what I mean, and I absolutely did not mean any of what you said. Please, have at least a modicum of common sense. For more evidence, look at AeonsLegend above. Thus, no more replies from me to you on this topic, there is simply no point. And yes, as AeonsLegend says, for some reason the game often does a fairly bad job of explaining how stuff works. There are at least two or three abilities whose descriptions are self-contradictory. The game, as a whole, is great, in my opinion, but every once in a while the documentation/explanations leave rather a lot to be desired.

So the ship combat is too easy on the second to hardest difficulty, and you stayed away from some of the hardest ships? I think the solutions are quite obvious - raise the difficult to PotD and/or fight these other ships. At this point it seems you're unreasonably frustrated with the game not catering to your every whim. Where, exactly, did I say the combat is too easy? Where, exactly, did I say I am frustrated? Please, explain. It is really quite difficult to discuss stuff if you take a stance on something I have never even alluded to. What I have said in this thread is that the naval combat is broken in the sense that other ships just disappear from the universe once boarded, i.e. they cannot be stolen in any way whatsoever. This is indisputable, as far as I'm concerned.

Incidentally, I'm playing on Veteran difficulty, and I've had no problems beating every enemy captain I've wanted to with my boarding strategy. Mind you, there have been a couple of ships I've stayed away from, because their crew has been well above my level.

@AeonsLegend: At what point (say, level) would you buy a new ship? And for what purpose, specifically? I am very interested. I have played up to level 16, and I'm still using the original ship I have at the start of the game. I have not felt any need to invest in a better one, since I have won all my battles. My tactic is always the same: I never fire my cannons, I approach as quickly as possible and then board.

As I said, I have never seen any mention of me sinking any ships. I have also never once fired my cannons, ever. There's no need. Stealing ships at sea was something that actual pirates actually did, so your calling it insanity is not the brightest thing. The fact that enemy ships simply disappear from the universe after boarding is a broken feature in the game, and the only reasonable option is just to let it lie, as it won't be changed.

There is nothing "broken" about it - you are just not in business of capturing ships. You board the ship, slaughter the crew, take what's on board and sink the ship. If there is something that doesn't make sense then it is that you still retrieve loot when sinkin the ship. This is not a reasonable argument, given that there are ships on sale and you may have reason to buy one, i.e. capturing an enemy ship could conceivably save you a lot of money, but the option doesn't exist. Also, I have never seen any mention of me sinking any ships, and if I had, I would say: what? I didn't want to do that.

Where is it implied that we're talking about a trilogy? As far as I know, nowhere.

Conceptually, the naval side of the game is "broken" in a serious way that I have simply decided to ignore, because it is the only reasonable option. The player has a ship. Other captains have ships. There are shipwrecks in the sea. You can board other people's ships without damaging them, kill everyone on board, and then... the other ship just disappears from the universe. Like, completely. It makes no sense whatsoever, but I've decided to let it lie.

Unfortunately, it's not the only thing that's poorly explained. I have fought plenty of ship battles, but I have never once fired my cannons. I also have never needed to. I make my way to the enemy ship as quickly as possible and then board and battle. It has always worked. Sometimes there's a little damage, but that has never mattered.

There is another instance of super loud drake wings, outside the ruins of Poko Kohara. The drake will be heard very loud the moment you enter the area.

You said earlier "only for that weapon" and I took it as that the action speed increase effect only affects the attacks with the weapon is not true for other weapons with action speed increase effects. Now you are saying "Generally speaking: weapon speed enchantments are only for that weapon.", which seems to contradict what you said earlier. If it isn't a bug then they should make the description clear in regard to which actions are affected by the action speed increase. Your last comment is the main point. The descriptions are often very unclear and sometimes even self-contradictory. Whoever wrote them or whatever algorithm was used in creating them did clearly not do a good job. This is really a problem in the game.

Wow! Interesting, thanks. I always ignored the xaurips until I got the dragon.

I just tried one of them, for the heck of it, knowing that I almost certainly couldn't beat it, given that I'm at level 14. That was indeed the case: I had absolutely no chance whatsoever. It was the steel thingie that I tried. You make a good point there, and that's mainly why I replied. BG2 did indeed allow you to cheese many of the really hard fights, although I personally tried to avoid those tactics (for the simple reason that it does rather take away your sense of accomplishment, doesn't it?). Now, I'm not sure whether there are any special tricks for these bosses in Deadfire, but from what I've played the game, it seems to me that the system is clearly superior to that of BG2 in the sense that cheesing is generally harder. I could be wrong here, of course, but that's my rather strong impression so far. In PoE1, I found only one way to defeat the adra dragon, and that was through using Gaze of the Adragan. I don't regard that as cheese at all, since it is a legitimate spell appropriately used, but I was left wondering how many other plausible ways there were. I tried a few approaches, and I tended to get roasted very quickly.

Here's my answer: Because these games are mainly designed as escapist power fantasy for an incredibly conservative male audience who want precisely that and would get royally angry if it were any other way. i'm a history and political science degree holder and i think youre over politicizing this this new liberal gamer trend about shaming power fantasies in rpgs is asinine, go play games the way you want to i want to crush nazis with tanks **** you lol I'm not sure what kind of discussion you're expecting to get with arguments and phrasing like that. You do realise, for instance, that your stance on "liberals" is only a fringe phenomenon in one small corner of the world? (There was also no shaming in what I wrote.)

Here's my answer: Because these games are mainly designed as escapist power fantasy for an incredibly conservative male audience who want precisely that and would get royally angry if it were any other way.

Mega bosses will in no way ruin the average player's game because they are optional and totally inconsequential to the story. So, if you're complaining about that, you have a problem. However, I tend to agree that they are also unnecessary in the game and don't look good, conceptually, either.

Hell, real journalists from actual journalistic publications are guilty of that now. It's yellow journalism 2.0 since the subscription model has been screwed over thanks to the advent of the "free" internet. The internet has already destroyed the music industry. The publishing industry is in dire straits because of the internet. Journalism is in a severe crisis because of the internet. That where we're at.

I would say with confidence -- knock on wood -- that the game is safe to play. I do think there are bugs(*), but nothing that really hurts. (*) For instance, see this one that I recently posted and found to be an annoyance: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/107463-have-you-noticed-this-with-traps-cursor-bug-i-presume/

This is metagaming and has nothing to do with whether the trap display mechanics in the game works or not. I'm arguing it doesn't, for reasons presented above.

skull indicators for quest difficulty still "work" with upscaling enabled (it used to not work at all some patches ago). it can get a bit weird if your mainchar levels up but you haven't leveled them up yet, because encounters scale on your "inherent" level, whether or not you've actually leveled your character up yet. so if your mainchar levels up but you haven't had a chance to click through their character screen yet, you might find a lot of quests suddenly have a skull next to them, because they've all just scaled up a level to match your "inherent" level, but the skull indicator is based on your "actual" level. So, if they do "work", why haven't I had any skulls in my journal since, like, level 8? I remember in my last attempt at a playthrough, before 4.0, when I got the third Eothas quest (He Waits in Fire), it was three red skulls. This time it was nothing. My level was the same, or if there was a difference, it was one level. Also, Beast of Winter has been a no-skulls quest for quite some time, but when I actually sailed to Harbinger's Watch a while back, the location was marked with three red skulls. My sense is that it does work, except in the journal, where the display is just non-functional.

Ain't gonna be no PoE3.

Apparently, though, with upscaling enabled, the journal pointers indicating quest difficulty (i.e. red and white skulls) tend to disappear or at least stop working properly, which is a major pain, in my view. I haven't had any skulls in my journal since approx. level 8, although some of the bounties, for instance, are still nearly impossible (red skull enemies when I go out and meet them). I'm playing veteran with upscaling enabled. I used to have the skulls in my journal, but only early in the game.

This is a behavior in people I just don't understand, and it crops up in everything. "Keep things new and interesting, but don't change anything." It's like no one even sees the inherent paradox. I get the sentiment behind it, they want to feel like they did the first time the experienced something. Except you can't get that feeling back. Chasing the dragon of nostalgia never works. This is the "experienced virgin" problem, which in literary and drama circles is often expressed thus: "Knowing everything that I know about it now, how I wish I could see Hamlet for the first time." It is not at all uncommon for people to be unaware of the paradoxes in their thinking. We humans are extraordinarily good at cognitive dissonance. It is only other people's paradoxes that we're generally able to see without difficulty.