aimlessgun

And I think that has a good chance of continuing, except under worse conditions, if the VTC or Rautai gain the upper hand. Colonial powers generally have to co-opt existing power structures to get and maintain control. The idea that the Rautai can somehow usher in some kind of superior, more egalitarian society across all of the Deadfire seems naive. The colonial powers will likely combine the worst of the Hauna with some extra oppression, murder and exploitation on top. It's possible, if the Rautai are truly committed, that after generations of war, blood and atrocity, that the Deadfire will be fully assimilated to a 'superior' society (though I'm sure Rautai has plenty of it's own problems which we don't get to see). But it's also possible that an independent Huana society will evolve for the better due to it's contact with the outside world. If I'm rolling the dice either way, I'd prefer the path with less atrocities and more self-determination.

I think the order you do stuff in Neketaka in is pretty fluid, though obviously if the enemies are too high level you should go back later. If you sail all over the place to towns where you don't have a quest yet, or focus too much on one faction and ignore the others, apparently stuff can break or make much less sense, but I don't know if theres any sort of guide to help with that. Definitely avoid following the main quest to Magran's teeth for as long as possible as that start forcing you to commit to or reject factions.

Got quite a few results now and RDC is still very unpopular. I guess assassination is generally frowned upon :D Not surprised pirates are so low, especially since in the midst of their questline it becomes pretty obvious you can just take the Fonferrus to Ukaizo without their help.

If you want to argue against the Kahanga in favor of Rautai or VTC, you have to successfully argue that colonialism isn't terrible. Which would be pretty difficult to argue given how badly it has usually turned out historically, leading to widespread oppression, exploitation, murder, discrimination, and leaving long term scars even after the colonial powers leave. The historically demonstrated evils of colonialism are far worse than the deficits of Huana society. And there is plenty of evidence in game that the Rautai and VTC will be just as bad as real world colonial powers. However if someone wants to make a case that the Indian caste system is worse than things like the British causing or amplifying famines leading to the deaths of millions, that would at least be a pretty interesting argument! EDIT: To address the title of the thread, no I don't think the Kahango are 'good' for the Deadfire, just not as bad as the other two (this is ignoring the main plot, VTC Castol (animancy research) and Rautai (overall organization) could possibly be better at dealing with the wheel-smashing crisis).

Yeah the entire main story (such as it was) and especially the very end was a bit of a letdown. I agree with criticisms already levied: lack of thematic unity with rest of game main character motivation did not really resonate. I guess Eothas destroyed my keep and killed my people but for some reason I don't feel an emotional connection to that, maybe relying too much on borrowing emotions from a game I played years ago. If they'd started with you ingame tending to your keep and such it would have been more upsetting. lack of important info about pre-Engwith soul system, or even acknowledgement that such info could exist (I guess confirmed to be cut dialogue by devs) Last section felt very rushed. Straight to a boss battle without much buildup, and the fight itself was quite boring, boss hardly did anything except summon some adds.

I have a question: when you don't choose a faction, why do you have to randomly fight one of them after turning off the storm? What even selects who shows up for that? In my game the Rautai showed up, didn't acknowledge the fact that I was on extremely good terms with them, and for some reason felt we had to fight because....why? I wasn't claiming the island for any other faction, just there to deal with Eothas. Seems like there should have been a dialogue like "ok good job winning the free for all and making it here, do your thing, I'll be over here talking to the giant adra statue who may be about to end the world" Is that what people are talking about when they refer to a 'bad' or 'downer' ending? I was confused because there was nothing in the loner ending which seemed 'bad' caused by you going alone. Factions fighting is like a neutral ending, if you don't personally step in and murder some of the factions of course they will fight.

Yeah personally I think this is the most stylish way to do it

I think so. Soul Whip damage increase is less valuable because you are already stacking so much +%damage from Rogue. Multiclass, non-Ascendant Cipher spells won't do all that much damage with low power levels. On bosses Recall Agony and Disintegrate might shine but I think generally it will be a significant damage loss (obviously charm and Pain Block will greatly help your party in other ways though).

Yeah the whole bounty system is sort of weird that way. As long as someone's paying you to murder, it's totally ok. Not just killing people in the streets and homes of Neketaka but like, "Oh you sunk a ship of my faction, but some shady person in Dunnage gave you a job to do it? Well then it's A OK with me, no faction rep loss." I like bounty hunting from a gameplay standpoint but maybe some more convincing ingame reasoning could have been offered.

Difficult to say when Resolve >= Con because presumably you'll be healing and increase your HP pool in that manner much more than Con ever can. However in a naive comparison you could say that at Deflection being 55 over enemy accuracy, they only hit you 20% of the time (all graze), 1 more deflection takes that to 19% of the time, so you've increased your EHP by ~5%. Though when you're removing the last of the enemy Hit rolls (from deflection +49 to +50) it's also approaching a 5% EHP increase. However if you're in this range the gains quickly ramp up from there, at the extreme going from Deflection +74 to +75 you become unhittable and gain infinite EHP

For focus on 'autoattack' and single target damage I think it's pretty hard to beat Ranger/Rogue, not too hard to always be Sneak Attacking for ~50% dmg, Deep Wounds is more dmg, at very high level you get another 50% from Deathblows, Debilitating Strike lets you proc sneak attack/deep wounds on your own and adds penetration for only 1 resource, being able to Blinding Strike casters from huge range is great, Devastating Blow finishes stuff. Ranger you get accuracy, Driving Flight is amazing, and another spammable 1 resource attack in Wounding Shot, and the pet is ok. It's not literally an auto-attack build but it's very easy to setup AI to spam Accurate Wounding/Debilitating Strike and Devastate targets under half HP.

Hrm the wiki says 14 INT 15 RES are required. Does svef give more resolve than ripplesponge?

Yes, in this extreme case of 160 acc vs 81 deflection (wow that is crazy low), the my spreadsheet says +1 acc is worth only 0.2% increase in DPS, so quite worthless to stack more at this point When I said '2%' this is a rough estimate for say an average character on PotD where their acc is close to enemy defense or lower. For example right now in midgame my characters are around 80 acc and generally fighting enemies with 80-110 defenses. As the streaker says above lots of weapons have 'on crit' effects though, but that, like the penetration benefits, would be more work to model than I'm willing to invest! Stacking almost anything in this game also has diminishing returns, if you already have +100% increased damage then one more point of might is not 3% more DPS, only 1.5% more (3/200 instead of 3/100). Same with dex if you already stacked a lot of action/recovery speed. So as in most RPGs you want a balance.

Kitchen Stove is for Thunderous Report, which is per encounter and a 160 dmg nuke in a huge AoE. It's pretty hard to not max focus instantly with that But this may not escape the next round of nerfs... Cipher certainly can't compare to wizard for options though as you said. Even if as a pure nuker it's pretty decent just using the few good spells you have repeatedly (Amp Wave and Disintegrate). So yeah I guess Ascendant is mostly a worse Wizard.

Ascendant really is a bit of an exception to this though since you just get full focus at the start of the fight from Kitchen Stove or some other weapon ability and spam free high cost spells.