Crucis

I have a different, though related, question that pertains to the Lantern, but also to many other unique, upgradeable items. Can you "install" multiple upgrades, or are you limited in how many you can select?

Actually, IIRC, the Dyrwood is sorta-kinda considered "America" in PoE, from what I recall.

1. The base ship in the game has served me quite well thus far, and I'm up to level 10 or 11, I think. It helps to upgrade her sails to make the ship faster, both in and out of combat. You don't need to spend obscene amounts of money to get a decent little upgrade. It also helps to get better guns. The stock guns are rather weak. There are a number of good upgraded guns. Some are better short range guns while others are better at long range. Pick the ones that suit you. I have a pair of Wyrmtongues on the starboard side of my ship, and a pair of other good guns on the port side. 2. I can't speak for later in the game as to whether one really needs a larger ship to survive. 3. There are videos on Youtube which give some very good explanations about ship to ship combat in PoE2. And I strongly suggest checking them out. Ship to ship combat can actually be kinda fun once you understand how to do it properly. But in all honestly, I prefer boarding, because I suspect that if you just outright sink enemy ships, you won't get any of their gold or various pieces of equipment, since it'll probably just sink to the bottom. 4. And even if you don't really want to bother with ship to ship duels, you can always just charge directly at the enemy ship and force a boarding action. (Never select the boarding option at the start of a battle, because that just causes you to take a lot of unnecessary damage and crew injuries.) But one thing that helps a lot here is to have picked up a lot of extra companions and sidekicks to have in reserve, because during boarding actions, they'll fight alongside your party (and the crew). And having a full crew helps too, because they fight as well. The more warm bodies you have fighting with your party during boarding actions, the better.

BTW, when I quickly read this thread title, I first saw "The British Knight", and my first thought was "God Save the Queen!" LOL! And then I looked more closely and saw "Brutish Knight", and sighed. Oh well.

Dunehunter, I agree fully. In fact, I wish that all of the pally orders had a lot more flavor to them. The pally kits in BG2 were a lot more differentiated than those in POE1/2. You had Caveliers who were roughly, dragon slayers. And inquisitors, who were mage slayers. And Undead Hunters, who are rather self explanatory. But what do we have in PoE1/2? We have 5 different orders who are essentially the same with a couple different ability tweaks, plus they have to live up to their order's favored dispositions (which is fine, though a bit more confusing in PoE2 without the disposition assistance tags in the text replies). Honestly, I don't really see how they can take the orders that currently exist and make them have more flavor along the lines of BG2's pally kits, without a major rework, right down to the core of what each order stands for, etc. Right now, they're a little bland. Not unplayable, just bland. Then again, I think that one could say the same for most subclasses in all of the classes. Most, if not all, of these subclasses seem to have been designed around making each of them represent a different play style for that class. For rogues, you have the Streetfighters which are pretty much melee rogues who are less about backstabbing or ranged combat and more about just plain direct, in your face brawling. And you have the Assassins who are pretty much the exact opposite of Streetfighters, i.e. they don't care so much about brawling as they do about assassinating their enemies with backstabbing attacks. Or for Rangers, you have Stalkers who are pretty much melee rangers versus Sharpshooters who are strictly ranged rangers. And the same can be said, in different ways about most other classes' subclasses. It seems a bit flavorless to me. I guess that I wish that there was more background, more flavor to support each of those subclasses than merely just creating playstyle based subclasses and leaving it at that. Just look at those BG2 paladin kits. Those 3 kits had oodles of flavor. And their abilities seemed to flow from their flavor rather than the other way around.

It's not from sicken with this item. I don't think it's even around the corpse piles. It just has a red block symbol when you mouse over it. Same here. Not sickened. And the red circle with the line thru it symbol also appeared for me as well. The purple trigger box is simply unselectable.

mainfrym, I finally figured out the problem, at least for me. That magnifying glass that's to the NW of the corrupted adra tower is NOT where the trigger is. The trigger is on the ring around the corrupted adra, just to its SOUTH west. The problem, as I see it, is that often it appears that some of the blue trigger "boxes" on the maps don't get highlighted by the TAB key unless you're practically right on top of them. This particular blue trigger box was one of these. I only found it because I had a character standing practically right next to it.

In the extreme northwest of the Old City Ruins (and I mean very extreme NW), there's one of those purple hidden areas where you normally find something of value. However, I am unable to select it and remove whatever's in it. Mildly annoying, since these purple hidden things usually do have something worth finding.

I'm on this "Sorceror and a Gentleman" quest right now. It says to search Fort Deadlight for info on Remaro's current whereabouts. And I swear that I searched high and low in that fort, talked to everyone, and not a thing. What did I miss?

I agree that there are a lot of buttons, but it is NOT that difficult to manage a party of 5. Just make sure that most of the party has their AI engaged and you can let them go. The AI in POE2 is solid, and thus far, it appears to me that AI controlled party members don't do stupid stuff.

Damn. This is the first I've read of skill trainers. That said, at 3000 for training, I'm in no rush to get trained. Not that I don't have the coin to afford it, but I haven't reached the amounts of gold in my coin purse to just throw 3k gp at this when there are so many other things to spend it on. I'm sure that eventually I'll have the coin to be able to afford this training though.

I think that racial balance has been improved from PoE1. In PoE1, I didn't like that the Wood Elf and Island Aumaua racial abilities, because they were so good that I could only justify NOT using a Wood Elf for a ranged character or an Island Aumaua for a melee character for role playing reasons. I do think that there are some subraces that still have benefits that seem a little too good (yes, Nature GL's, looking at you). Part of me wishes that they'd just remove the subracial benefits entirely (except for the attribute bonuses). And perhaps, just give each sub race perhaps an extra bonus Attribute point, assigned to an attribute appropriate to each subrace. Aumaua might both get another point of Might, while Pale Elves might get an extra point in Con, while Wood Elves might get an extra point in Dex or possibly Per. Mountain Dwarves might get it in Con, while Boreal Dwarves might get it in Per. And so on. Just a wild idea.

On what difficulty ? On what role ? I played my pure streetfighter in a party of 5, usually with two melee (him and either pallegina or Eder.) When I wanted to bring more melee chars I was switching him to ranged blunderbuss with modal (giving him the first tier of the passive 100% of the time). Note: he was not using any form of stealth or flanking. On veteran, for the first half of the game, he was bloodied VERY often, and flanked quite often. Second half he was only bloodied and/or flanked on difficult battles, because everything was dying too quickly under his attacks. But it still definitely helped a lot in those difficult battles. If your goal is to use your character as a stealthy flanker, then I agree streetfighter is inefficient. If your goal is to stand in the middle of the melee, then it is the best rogue subclass. Yeah, this seems like a very sound observation. The streetfighter pretty much needs to be in melee to get himself either flanked or bloodied to trigger his subclass abilities. I'm not that sure that a streetfighter/Fighter(any type) is such a great combo, though if you're wearing light enough armor to not be too well protected, I suppose it could work. A streetfighter/monk combo might be better, since monks (other than shattered pillar) want to take damage for their wounds, so it seems like there'd be some good synergy there. Assassins seem like they'd be better for the stealthy flankers, while Streetfighters are more the in-your-face melee brawler type. (Not exactly sure what to make of Tricksters.)

So? So? That's all you've got is "so?" Let me spell this out for you. There's a history in these isomorphic fantasy cRPGs (i.e. the BG and IWD series as well as PoE1) of having a party size of 6. It's tradition. And frankly, I think it should have stayed at 6, if for no other reason than tradition. Besides, 6 is a good number for a party size. It's enough to allow you to form the core of a party's needs and have a couple more slots to play around with. At 5, there simply isn't as much room for experimentation, at least for me. I always like having at least one strong frontliner, one healer, one trapster (mechanic, whatever you want to call it), and one spellcaster of some type. And having 2 more slots allowed me to adjust the party's comp to fit whatever play style I wanted. Looking for a stronger melee party, use one of the slots for another frontliner. Want a good support mid-liner, add a ranger or a chanter, perhaps a cipher, etc. A party of 6 was simply a good number that allowed for a reasonable amount of party comp mixes without going overboard. Setting the party at 5 leaves a lot less room for fiddling around with party comp, IMO.

I'm having this problem as well.

Are you only thinking about it on a class combo level or on the subclass combo level? Honestly, it'd take a lot more work to come up with unique abilities for every single potential subclass/subclass MC combo. And even with just doing it on the higher main class level, I think that it'd require being certain that the ability didn't really go against the possible subclass' themes. Still, it is an interesting idea, though i don't know how viable it is.

Could you elaborate? I can perhaps see the "chore" part, as combat required more of the player's attention in the original. But, since most fights in Deadfire do not reward or punish the player for paying attention and actually using tactics, I'm failing to see how most combats are actually interesting in Deadfire? With abilities and health regen between fights, individual encounters can be more dangerous. Because of this system, I try to punch above my weight far more often, seeking out red skull fights and seeing if I can pull them off. It also means I don't have ot conserve abilities as a resource, so I can comfortably steamroll trash mobs quickly. All the fights in PoE1 felt like they just dragged on. Resource management isn't fun. Playing with abilities and spells to solve an encounter is. I see it 180o differently. Having to manage your health resources was a challenge and that's what made it more fun. Seeing how long you could push into a dungeon before you were forced to fall back and rest. What you describe as "fun" is completely mindlessness. About the only resource you have to worry about is the 3 injuries before death. Big whup. As for going for those "red skull" fights, you could do that too, in PoE1. It's called reloading, for crying out loud! It was a challenge, but any joy that could've possibly come out of that challenge was marred by the fact that running out of camping supplies meant you'd have to suffer through numerous lengthy loading screens (despite having the game on SSD.) Fortunately, PoE2 loads much faster, so it wouldn't an issue this time around. I was thinking more about HP and Endurance, rather than camping supplies. Frankly, I don't think that limited "camping supplies" was that great an idea. As long as you had a good supply of food and drink, anything else would be a luxury that shouldn't have been strictly necessary to rest. What would these "other things" be? A bed roll? You really only "need" one per person, and I'd assume that that's just party of any adventurer's kit. Fire wood? Well, maybe if you really need a fire in a dungeon, perhaps. But outside in the great outdoors, you shouldn't have to be concerned with packing firewood. Keep your supply of firewood for dungeons and just go scavenge some in the woods around you (if there are any, etc.). It seems a bit silly that there should have been such a constraining limit on camping supplies, when you think about how much anyone could carry with them, plus how one can get along with out a lot of things if pressed. It's also kind of silly when you think of all the stuff you're allowed to carry in your "stash" to then be limited in "camping supplies" so severely. On the flip side, I found that having a limited ability to rest prevented rest spamming so that you could fight a battle and blow your entire memory of spells on a single battle, then go rest up before moving on to the next battle. To me, limited camping supplies encouraged a greater reliance on physical combat as well as spell casting classes whose abilities weren't rest-limited. Of course, this wouldn't prevent some people from just walking all the way back to an inn to rest and rest-spam that way. But I would never do it. To me, it was more ethical to roleplay my spellcasters and try to work within the resting limitations. It made it important to conserve spells for when I really needed to use them, and rely on my physical combatants to carry most battles, as well as relying on their endurance to get me as far as I could go on a single "tank" of endurance "gas".

I agree with what you said here. After completing the game, I was surprised that there wasn't an adra dragon or Llengrath type battle to really make things interesting. On Vet, the only encounters I had trouble with were against fampyrs and that's cause they used MY party members against me :D Oh well, time for a PotD playthrough to see how that goes. I never really liked the Adrea Dragon fight. It always seemed too cheesy. I preferred the dragon in Hylea's temple because it was a fight that you could win "honestly" without resorting to cheesy tactics. At least that's how it felt to me. As for fampyrs, yeah, any time in a fight where one side starts charming the other's combatants, it's going to be tough ... for one side or the other. It's one of the reasons why I like having a paladin around with the Aegis of Loyalty ability to uncharm party members. Of course, one has to keep the pally from being charmed. And it also helps to keep the pally alive too. A KO'd pally helps no one.

Could you elaborate? I can perhaps see the "chore" part, as combat required more of the player's attention in the original. But, since most fights in Deadfire do not reward or punish the player for paying attention and actually using tactics, I'm failing to see how most combats are actually interesting in Deadfire? With abilities and health regen between fights, individual encounters can be more dangerous. Because of this system, I try to punch above my weight far more often, seeking out red skull fights and seeing if I can pull them off. It also means I don't have ot conserve abilities as a resource, so I can comfortably steamroll trash mobs quickly. All the fights in PoE1 felt like they just dragged on. Resource management isn't fun. Playing with abilities and spells to solve an encounter is. I see it 180o differently. Having to manage your health resources was a challenge and that's what made it more fun. Seeing how long you could push into a dungeon before you were forced to fall back and rest. What you describe as "fun" is completely mindlessness. About the only resource you have to worry about is the 3 injuries before death. Big whup. As for going for those "red skull" fights, you could do that too, in PoE1. It's called reloading, for crying out loud!

OK, I guess I'm just a contrarian, but I loved those so-called "trash fights". Every fight doesn't need to be "meaningful", for crying out loud.

I agree that for the Deadfire setting, the ship as stronghold does fit. But overall, I'd rather have neither a castle nor a ship for my optimal "stronghold". Were it in PoE1, I'd have rather had a nice little house in Dyrford. Or alternatively, a nice little townhouse in Defiance Bay. I don't overly mind the ship. And it's kinda nice that you aren't required to upgrade your ship, at least as far as I've gotten into the game. I've gotten pretty well into it without needing to upgrade. I did buy a couple of cannons just to fully arm the Defiant, and bought some cheap upgrade sails for a smidge more speed. But I really didn't HAVE to do it. In truth, I prefer charging the enemy ship and forcing a boarding action, to any long, prolonged ship vs ship action using the guns.

I don't know if it's changed any from POE1, but I always found Confusion to be a very strong spell to have when facing a number of strong enemies. It would either get them to fight their own guys or just stand around doing nothing. Either way, it was a good way to temporarily reduce the number of enemies you had to deal with, at least for a while.

if it's not a bug it's really weird. That make lot of skills/upgrades incompatibles since lot of rogues abilities are about invisibility & DOT. I hate how most dev/games screw the rogue. You're already 'taxed' with skills, because for a traditionnal rogues you need stealth, sleight hands, mechanics, and alchemy (poisons) & explosives fit the theme too. They could have keep sleight of H and Stealth in one skill, same for mechanic/explosives. DOS 2 done the exact same thing, forcing the rogue to take multiple skills. You're not forced to upgrade evasive roll, always good alone, but upgraded random dps is always good just for 1 pt. I actually think that splitting the skills out the way they've done is a good thing. Merging them lets players build rogues that will invariably end up being the same all the time, skill wise. By splitting up these rogue-ish skills, it forces you to decide what sort of rogue you want to be. Are you more into stealth and traps? Or are you more into poisons and explosives? Or some combination thereof? If the skills were merged into just a couple, every rogue could be an expert in every rogue "discipline". And that doesn't really seem like a good thing to me, from a game design perspective.

I'm the opposite. I don't enjoy dark, gloomy themes. I'm not looking for it to be a knee-slapping comedy either. If I want dark and gloomy, I'd just go read some old-school existential novel ... and be bored senseless. It’s your point of view. I don’t love this easy humor in everything in « Modern » pop-culture like Marvel. This « ****-off » spirit as argument of modernity. Serious theme is seen as boring... It’s an infantilizing effect « it’s too dark for me, I’m a crying baby. I wanna just lol and don’t care about anything». Dark and serious themes are deeper, CRPG isn’t Fortnite and the easy entertainment isn’t the main goal. There is SO MANY superficial, fun and light games actually even in the RPG category. So Pillars of Eternity was an exception and it was welcome. DaKatarn, I'm hardly a kid. And I wouldn't have agreed with you even before the first Marvel movie had been released. Entertainment should be about fun, not oppressively depressing. I don't give a flying bleep about "dark and serious themes" in entertainment. Never have and never will. And I don't think that it had damn all to do with modern culture or modernity. It's about making entertainment fun and enjoyable! People have been making movies fun and enjoyable, rather than dark and gloomy, for a long time. This is nothing new. Was the original Star Wars dark and gloomy? Were any of the Back to the Future movies dark and gloomy? No, those movies were fun and entertaining! Movie makers with a lick of sense know that people are much more interested in paying to watch good, fun, escapist entertainment than dark and gloomy bore fests. People want to be entertained and have fun while escaping from their reality. So what if it's "superficial"? There's not a chance in hell that I'd ever take an RPG seriously as a serious work of art, like some super serious "novel". Of course, I don't give a flying fig about them either. Even when I read books (which I do quite often, BTW), I am again reading for enjoyment, not to read some super-serious, pretentious crap. When I was in high school (all those decades ago), the English teacher could make me read that crap. Today, there's not a chance in hell that I'd pay one thin dime for it, let alone read it.

Ummm, Maia didn't join the Watcher's party to ally herself with the Watcher. She was assigned to go with the Watcher, by her employers. I'm not exactly sure that Pallegina is the same way, but she's not that different in that regard. I think that it's a big leap to expect that either Maia or (perhaps) Pallegina would ignore their allegiance to their bosses just because they are working with the Watcher at their bosses' behest.