Purudaya

I was able to convince him by assuring him that it was a temporary arrangement. I don't think it gives you a disposition hit if you go that route (?) I also selected the benevolent "you need to help your people" line with Vatnir beforehand; not sure if that makes any difference.

That's correct - they don't give you an at-will smoke veil, but the effect once triggered is essentially the same. You just have to kill someone first

I'm almost certain none of the DLCs are "sequel" or post-campaign content.

You only get the assassinate passive when attack from stealth. Sneak attack is not set at +30% (it will increase with power level, up to +70% on a single class rogue) and activates any time you attack an enemy suffering from any affliction. As Clerith said, you can either have another character apply these with an AoE ability/spell or you can apply them on a single-target basis with your rogue (crippling strike, blinding strike, etc). Once you gain access to the "Persistent Distraction" ability, you will automatically apply afflictions to any enemy you are engaged with, removing the need to "set up" sneak attacks through spells/abilities. If you want to make as much use of assassinate as possible, you'll want to focus your character around stealth abilities. I'd recommend the Devil of Caroc breastplate and the new assassin's boots from the free Deck of Many things DLC, which (combined) will give you an additional 2 uses of smoke veil per fight.

The deck of many things is a merchant ship where you can buy unique items. You can buy a "deck of endless possibilities" there which lets you apply a random (temporary from what i've tested so far) effect during combat. Trinkets are available in the Beast of Winter DLC and the devs have said that they're looking at backloading them into the rest of the game in future updates.

The new dlc doesn't increase the level cap or reduce xp gain. It's designed for level 15-16 parties iirc and I think I remember the devs saying that future dlcs will be for higher levels.

I've generally been kind of anti-nerf on this, but just for the sake of argument - why not just get rid of full attacks? Two-weapon style would still have plenty of advantages/use cases (more attacks, faster application of damage bonuses and debilitating effects, dual enchantment synergies), but other styles would be much more competitive and the differences would no longer shoehorn certain classes (like rogues) into TWS. Seems easier than finding ways to make 1handed and 2handed compete with the very hard-to-beat current TWS implementation.

You can also do this in real time using the unity console mod over at the deadfire nexus. Under "appearance" there should be a scale option that you can tick up and down, even to pretty extreme degrees. I suggest trying a fight with a 20ft tall party at least once.

How do items factor in to this? If I make a Barbarian/Monk, equip it with Modwyr, activate swift flurry and frenzy, then kill a guy, I'm not getting stacking action speed bonuses from swift flurry, frenzy, Modwyr, and bloodlust because the first two are actives and cancel each other out, right? But the rest should stack?

You're saying that the version numbers have been advanced because of the release of DLC; I'm saying that the version numbers have been advanced due to major gameplay innovations independent of the DLC and that the DLC is offered optionally alongside them. As my analogy was meant to illustrate, the presentation of two things at the same time does not mean that they are interdependent. Given that one of the features is provided automatically and the other must be paid for, it's logical to assume that the former drives the version change independent of the latter. IN EITHER CASE, it's irrelevant to my main contention, which was that 2.0 (so far) doesn't seem to feature the core gameplay improvements that Obsidian's past X.0s have had. It's an observation, that's all. TL;DR: Yes, each major iterative patch in the PoE series has had optional DLC offered alongside it, but each major iterative patch in the PoE series has also included major features that affect the core gameplay beyond the scope of the DLC. Deadfire 2.0, from what we've seen thus far, does not appear to follow in that trend, hence the original point of this thread. --- As others have said, the lack of core gameplay improvements in the beta doesn't necessarily mean that they won't be featured in the release (although we're coming down to the wire) or soon afterward. If 1.1 and 1.2 could bring major improvements to balance and difficulty, 2.1 and 2.2 certainly can as well.

Um, yes? When your car gets a free transmission repair due to a manufacturer recall and the mechanic offers to sell you new windshield wiper blades on the same day, you do understand how the latter is not an interdependent feature of the former, right? Beast of Winter is not a feature of 2.0. If someone could please point me to any Twitch stream, announcement, or release where Obsidian has referred to it as such (and in fact not as explicitly independent), please let me know and I'll gladly retract my argument. True, the version jumps usually indicate major changes, but to my mind the patches so far has contained some fairly hefty balance changes. Especially, nerfing some fairly OP abilities and items that allowed for somewhat game-breaking recursive proccing. Those things are almost bugs in of themselves since they are most likely the result of typing errors or misunderstanding of what the results of the proc would actually be, and they really have priority over other balance considerations. There have been some significant of other balance and easy-of-use changes that weren't even in the patch notes, as far as I could tell. So it's not like Obsidian have been lazy and ignored its costumers. It seems though that what people are actually irritated by is that the changes weren't as major in this BETA patch as the ones in previous patches, yet. Now it could be that the balance people at Obsidian are currently somewhat busy with potential problems with the new DLC, and there must be some new mistakes in there that won't be discovered until it is unleashed upon the horde of gamers. They will be quite busy trying to figure out everything that needs doing. My point is, why the surprise? Obsidian isn't the largest studio out there with the resources to infinitely prolong the development cycle to test its products to destruction. That is unfortunately our job as consumers and gamers. It wouldn't surprise me if the balance patch would arrive fairly soon after the 2.0, after they have more data to properly address concerns. Yeah, that's reasonable. I guess some minor disappointment is more justified than surprise - as I've said before, I'm confident that Deadfire is going to get there with future updates but it would have been nice if some of the more glaring balance/difficulty issues could've been addressed this time around (and yes, its possible that they may still be). Despite the title of my OP, it's less about whether the patch is called 1.5 or 2.0 and more about what it does/doesn't do and my reaction to that as a player. Should've left the conversation about version #'s/what "should" be in an X.0 out of it.

*Cough* Beast of Winter *cough*Beast of Winter is an optional DLC and isn't part of the patch – they've even been advertising the two as separate features that happen to be dropping on the same day. PoE1's jump to 3.0 was similarly advertised as being about UI and gameplay changes dropping universally alongside optional White March content and not due to the content itself. Come to think of it, I don't think optional DLC ever increases a game's version # by itself unless changes to the core game had to be made in order to implement it. --- At the end of the day, I'm not a developer and can only speak to "common practices" to the extent that I've experienced them as a consumer. But I bet if we looked at X.0 version iterations for PoE1 or other recent CRPGs we'd typically find more than bug fixes (whether they drop alongside optional DLCs or not).

Well, we've had two patches and a hotfix and we're currently on 1.2x. Typically a jump to a new X.0 version number indicates some major iterative change, while this patch appears to do less for the game than 1.1 did. So far, the balance/gameplay/difficulty improvements have been included in each patch beta. Given that we're two days from release, an absence of balance/gameplay/difficulty improvements at this stage of the beta almost certainly means that we're not going to see them in the release either. Which, again, fine – I'm glad to see bugs squashed (although 2.0 seems to have introduced its fair share of new ones) as long as I know that the devs are actively working in response to gameplay feedback as well.

This is a good idea, but I'd rather see them buff one-handed/two handed up rather than nerf two-weapon down (as you'd really have to take away a lot to truly make up for all of the advantages). Although I guess I would agree that a nerf to off-hand accuracy could be in order. I'd really like to see the devs get creative and come up with some unique effects for one/two-handed (let two-handed full attacks affect a 60° cone, give one-handed the ability to apply longer effect durations, etc.) Have any of the devs even acknowledged the weapon style issue? 2.0 doesn't address it at all.

FWIW, I view the removial of the infinite recursive procs as a bugfix, rather than a rebalancing act. Fair enough, but making a full attack against every enemy in a path/every surrounding enemy were intended features and were a big part of what made those builds so ridiculous. Even without recursive procs, 1.0 mob stance and charge trivialized most other martial classes/abilities.

DOS1 enhanced edition was released 1,5 years after the game itself. DOS2:EE is coming soon, so.. a year. Both are released as stand-alone games, not a forced update - sure, you get them for free, but they are a completey different game in your Steam library. While Pillars completely rebalanced its core game in the first effing patch! Saying that the difference is humongous would be an understatement. Correct, and for the better. Making a dual-wielding Fighter/Monk and spamming charge/flagellant's path against groups of enemies for infinite Mob Stance/Swift Flurry procs was fun for like a day, but would you really have wanted that to remain in the final product? Thankfully, the class mechanics have been drastically improved since then, but there are still issues: one frequent complaint is that because one-handed and two-handed styles receive no benefit from full attacks (among other reasons), two-weapon style > everything else for most martial DPS builds. Wouldn't you want to see one-handed and two-handed receive a few more tweaks to be more attractive? If balance isn't important to you, how about difficulty - don't you want a game where the difficulty remains consistent and doesn't drop off just when your class abilities start to get interesting? I haven't seen enough of your posts to know why you're so bitter about game balancing, but I don't think that players are 'entitled' for wanting the same mechanical refinement that was achieved for PoE1 or for expecting further PotD tuning as has been promised by the devs. Additional balance and difficulty changes ARE coming (sorry); I'd just like to see them sooner rather than later so I can get back to enjoying the game.

I very much doubt that Obsidian would release the game in its 1.0 state (they're probably shooting for as much version parity as possible). The free dlc might be a different story in that they could stagger it out over the first two weeks post-release to build interest, but it could very well just be available for download straight from the beginning. Either way, I don't think you'll have to wait very long to be able to access the same content/version on consoles that you can access on Steam/GoG.

Right, but it shouldn't be up to players to ensure that combat is interesting and the mechanics are well-balanced. If these patch notes are any indication, it seems like they got 75% of the way there with 1.1/1.2 and then just... gave up? Or decided that the game was good enough that they could put the rest of the difficulty and class balancing on the back burner until the new content was out. I mean, I appreciate the bug squashing. But if the devs think the base game is fully done, they ought to spend some more time engaging with users on the forums.

It doesn't appear so. The ability to view your character's ability tree outside of level up doesn't seem to have made it either. Granted, it's just the beta, but release is a week away and I doubt they're going to drop new UI features between now and then.

Yeah, Berath's challenge is ok but the Magran one is basically just about optimizing party AI and automating fights as much as possible. A rest-limiting challenge would be nice (once every 24 hours, restricted locations, etc). So would a reduced XP challenge or something... but I know for a fact that I'm not going to voluntarily take the WP out of RTWP. It's just not that kind of game. And where are the "balance improvements" that the patch notes make reference to? Self immolation is still a suicide button, single class ciphers and assassins still need help, weapon styles are still unbalanced, and PotD's difficulty still drops off a cliff after around level 12. Also, I just tested 2.0 and enemies are still becoming unkillable/untargetable in combat, a bug that has been plaguing this game since launch. I'm still a fan of Deadfire and am sure it's going to be truly stellar once it reaches its final state, but I'd like to start my second playthrough already.

Thanks for the new features and bug fixes! Any chance that PotD will receive some more tuning before release?

https://steamcommunity.com/games/560130/announcements/detail/1721949565416612105 Aside from the 2 god challenges, there don't seem to be any significant balance/gameplay improvements outside of bug fixes. You'd think the differences would be at least as significant as previous patches given that this was supposed to be a major version iteration, but so far this reminds me more of a bughunt + free minor dlc than a serious gameplay patch. That's by no means a bad thing and maybe I've been spoiled by previous patches and improvements, but I'm really hoping we'll see some more class and PotD tuning before August 2.

With full attacks, action speed bonuses, and double passive weapon enchantments, two-weapon style is far and away superior to one-handed and two-handed for most builds. Will we see some weapon style rebalancing in 2.0?

I don't think it would be terribly unbalanced to reduce smoke veil/shadowing beyond by 1 Guile each. Neither ability deals any damage or provides any inspirations (the upgraded version of SB could be left at 3 guile), and the time you spend in recovery after going invisible is time you would have otherwise spent attacking, so the net melee DPS is less than an unstealthed dual wielding rogue making full attacks and even worse vs a streetfighter heating up/on edge. To make up for the extra time spent untargetable, maybe add an additional 5-10% to the damage received malus. The problem is that the extra uses would probably break assassin/evoker cheese, since AoE spells currently benefit from Assassinate. The ability should probably be changed to be exclusive to ranged/melee the way swift flurry was (which is probably more in line with the flavor of the class), but I can think of a few people who would see their assassin/caster builds damaged as a result.

How reliant is this build on equipment? I try to avoid anything that requires too much metagaming, so how does it hold up without Apex Ward's Hard Counter? Last Word and the blackened plate could probably be replaced by other weapon/armor variants until you get them, but that extra crushing riposte seems pretty essential. Where is Apex Ward acquired, by the way? Is it in a commonly encountered location or somewhere more obscure?