xzar_monty

Interesting: in the Abyss, I became one of the fighters (i.e. slaves) in the battle arena, and my Azata fast healing disappeared. It didn't come back even after I became free again (i.e. finished that quest).

Sheesh. I am now in the Abyss. Two observations: 1) Either the Owlcat people are fairly poor designers, or they really want to make things inconvenient for the player. This city is really quite annoying to navigate. And when I say annoying, I mean that there's difficulty without purpose. I like a challenge if there's a reward, but there's none here that I can see. 2) They have borrowed very heavily from the Drow city in Baldur's Gate II. It probably doesn't count as plagiarism, but surely an awful lot of stuff has been lifted from there.

The Logistics one is simple enough: I clearly didn't build enough stuff. So that one's on me, sure. So many buildings seemed not worth it that I didn't bother -- but obviously I should have, for the Logistics gains. (Oh heck, in this game you really have to read the fine print. A case in point: when defending the inn in early game, Irabeth shouts: "Kill the arsonists!" That's your only clue that the arsonists are indeed the key and the only key to the whole battle.) The Leadership one is odd, as it was stuck for some time, and nothing happened despite me winning more battles. So, a bug, perhaps? I waited quite a few days (like, 50+) because I wanted to do all the relic stuff before I went to the Abyss. But nothing happened on the Leadership front. Thanks!

Leadership and Logistics, and they're actually at III, not IV. I've got the XP to progress at Leadership, but it hasn't been happening, while Logistics legitimately lacks XP. I already failed the quest and I'm not going to do the Midnight Fane all over again (surely the failure can't be that consequential in terms of finishing the game?), but yes, if you have info on this, I am interested. It would be nice to know what I may have done wrong, or what may not have happened that should have. Thanks in advance.

The stealing mechanics really is mightily weird. I mean, stealing was noticed in Ultima V, back in the 1980s, but in P:K and WotR nobody cares. It's just odd. Btw, after Playful Darkness and another encounter (boss), I ended up in the Abyss and presumably in Act 4 or whatever -- and immediately failed a quest. I think it was called "Maximize all crusade stats", close to that anyway. I really don't know what I could have done better: the map is pretty much cleared and I waited for some extra demon armies to arrive, but that's about it. Not a lot more to do, in my understanding. My levels are at IV and V. In at least one stat I have more XP than is needed to progress but there is no progress. Again, it's just odd.

And so I met everyone's favourite enemy, Playful Darkness. It's certainly not a pleasant encounter. In fact, after I had tried it once on Core(*), I set my Difficulty to Normal and managed the encounter on my first try. The loot was underwhelming, i.e. just what I expected. The XP reward was good, though, it has to be said. I can't remember getting anything close to those numbers from anything else, quest-related or otherwise. I suppose the most reasonable way to deal with this is "tons of summons" + "as much dispelling as you can muster" + "and then all the firepower you have". Firepower both literal and figurative. (*) Actually Custom. Core has the "Numer of Enemies" set at "Increased", whereas I want it at "Normal". Everything else is at Core settings for me. I find it slightly annoying that the default Core is, in a way, something other than Core.

I am very much inclined to think that Owlcat likes to annoy players. In Act 3, there's a puzzle where a treant (or something like that) separates the main character from the rest of the group. There's a long puzzle ahead -- long in the sense that even if you know what to do, walking through all the necessary steps takes quite some time. After that, there's a battle where you're on your own (at the start) against a mini-boss. After that, there's no real reward, neither in terms of items nor XP. That felt nasty.

I'm generally not in favor of shorter games (despite also having all that stuff you mention). I also don't really care for replayability. What I mainly enjoy in cRPGS is a really good story that takes me for a ride. And replayability is not a factor for me because of my emphasis on story: once I know the story, much of the magic is gone, except if the game is really good, I do tend to do another run with different NPCs, if I feel I missed out on something big in that department. I wrote this simply to emphasize what a marvelous success Deadfire was simply as a game. At least some of our interests are quite different, yet we both enjoyed Deadfire an awful lot, it's one of our favorite games ever.

It really is a problem, but I don't think there will be any more fixes to Deadfire. The game is almost four years old, and nothing further will be done. I will be happy to be proven wrong, of course.

Ah, yes, so there were perhaps two problems: potential consumers uninterested in Deadfire (because of PoE) and potential consumers unaware of Deadfire (because of a number of factors). Not a good starting ponit, that.

We've had plenty of these discussions on the forums already, and it appears that there is no definite answer to why Deadfire sold so badly. However, one thing that seems fairly certain to me is that a substantial portion of the reason has to do with PoE, not Deadfire. Deadfire's sales were low right from the start, which means that a lot of people were not interested in the game in the first place. Maybe they opted for PoE because of the nostalgia, and then they realized they actually didn't like the game that much, so they didn't bother to even try Deadfire. Deadfire got good reviews, so it's not as if the game was a failure in that sense. It seems more likely that the audience that was there for PoE was not there for Deadfire. Which, in my view, is a great shame, because Deadfire is a great game. It is worth mentioning that buying a game and liking a game are two different things. For example, I think D:OS2 is rubbish. I played it for about two hours, realized it doesn't interest me at all and never went back. But in order to play it for those two hours, I had to buy it, which means that I am one of the people who contributed to its success, even if I think it's utter trash.

Fair point! I cannot remember it ever being on for 10 seconds even, so I suppose it really does graze often. You use it against the biggies, and the biggies have high fortitude.

Short durations in general are a nuisance. For instance, there's a scroll called Rusted Armor which weakens enemy defenses. But if it's on for 5 to 8 seconds, it means essentially nothing.

Here's another little point about the game: the worldbuilding is a bit silly, in many respects. I am happy to admit that this is not a major problem, but then again, it does take away from the immersion. A good example of this is that there's just an awful lot of stuff lying around everywhere, and it sort of makes you wonder what kind of world this is: why is every place positively littered with stuff that you can pick up? There's gold everywhere, for instance. No one will care if you take it all. I just entered the Abyss, and the same goes on there, too. In a random stack of loot, I found a smoking pipe and such, all the same stuff you find on the material plane. And so I find myself asking: what were the game-makers thinking? It's the abyss for crying out lout. Smoking pipes lying around?

Fair point. I'm not going to enter the Owlcat forum, though, this one's enough for me. But, as I said, fair point. It *would* be better if Owlcat had a chance to see this (provided that they respond to feedback).

I also think that mega-bosses are very poor, but apart from that, I cannot agree with your criticism of fight mechanics. Perhaps you could elaborate a little?

I think I'm close to the end of Act 3 now, and I'm getting the feeling that my crusade might come crashing down eventually, because of something I have neglected. Let's hope it won't happen, but you're absolutely right: it's almost impossible to know what's important and what's not. By the way, does everybody else keep getting a whole bunch of unnecessary army units? I've got some mongrel archers, some shieldbearers and whatnot, and essentially no use for them. I get them as rewards for quests and choices, but they sure don't look useful.

This is by far the most annoying aspect of the game for me. Owlcat doesn't care one bit for fair play, it just blatantly cheats. I don't understand this. I recently had a boss fight with a fellow who seemed pretty difficult at the start (but then I made him useless with one spell). When he died, he metamorphosed into something else entirely, which was understandable given his mythic status (at least according to how I read it). But then, after I destroyed everything he metamorphosed into, he turned into yet another thing which made no sense whatsoever, and after I destroyed that, he came back around for a chat. This stuff makes no sense.

King is very talented and much more than a horror writer, but he's also very uneven. I think his best, by far, in the 2000s is Under the Dome (silly ending but that was only to be expected). Duma Key is also quite all right, and the beginning of The Outsider is superb but the end is rubbish. Doctor Sleep is not bad at all. Not great King, but not bad at all. FWIW, I think King's best are 'Salem's Lot and IT. Of the shorter stories, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is probably the finest

Yeah, I noticed this (sorry for the double quote by the way). I generally dislike metagaming but I did read some info on the units, because what the game tells me is just so vague and difficult to assess. Also, it seems to me that some units really are rubbish, definitely not worth investing in. One example would be shieldbearers. Maybe I'm not a good player of the game, but the only legitimate use I can think for these is meat shield: if the enemy has large teleporting units such as glabrezus, you can move your shieldbearers in front of your archers so that the glabrezus can't teleport next to them and destroy them. And that's it. Even this is a rare enough instance, so shieldbearers are not worth it even for this occasion. Do correct me if I'm terribly wrong. (I received some shieldbearers after completing a quest or doing something like that, I can't remember -- I certainly didn't invest in them.) I have come across an enemy army with shieldbearers in it, and they were useless there, too. Took some time to take down, obviously, but posed no danger whatsoever.

Oh heck, I hadn't thought of this at all. Let's see if I run into a fatal morale drop later on. I have definitely waged a war of conquest. Surely there was no way I could have known otherwise (from within the game).

Wow. I agree that it's weird. Maybe I'll eventually see him. When it comes to random encounters, by the way, I must say the design leaves a lot to be desired. I am in favor of them as a concept, but the application is poor. Essentially every wilderness encounter has been one where the enemy is already right at melee range, closer than melee range, almost on top of / in the middle of my group. That's inexplicable to me: there's no reasonable way to assume that a group of ash giants, for instance, could ever walk right into my group without me noticing them from, say, 30 feet (heck, I should notice them from 300 feet and further!). But they are at 5 feet and closer right from the start. Makes no sense.

I am now in Act 3, I guess, and I have not seen the skeletal merchant yet. I only thought he appeared in Pathfinder: Kingmaker...

I decided to carry everything (that wasn't heavy) from Areelu's lab, and there were indeed legitimate junk items there. So, I was able to finish this silly quest. Thanks!

I already carry some pieces of junk, such as letters, porcelain plates (worth 2 gp each), a cracked cell key and so on. None of these appear in the inventory, although I think they should, as they qualify as junk. If not, what does? It's really peculiar that when I try to interact with that enchanted piece of land, the only thing appearing in my inventory is potions. They appear in the "all items" and "usable items" categories, but nothing else appears anywhere else.