Boeroer

Imo Hiravias is a great Druid.

I wrote that some days ago already but I guess it doesn't hurt to repeat it: Brutal Takedown's bonus damage only has to overcome 1/4 of enemies' DR iirc (or was it 1/2? don't remember.. all fixed damage abilities do this for whatever reason). Anyway this is cool against high DR foes like many constructs, beetles and so on. If Itumaak uses a Brutal Takedown with bonuses from Vicious/Merciless Companion and Predator's Sense things get brutal indeed. 😄

No problem with a Wizard though because you will find a ton of grimoires with all kind of spells in it. So just bring one with some alternative elemental damage for frost/whatever immune foes.

Sure. Sagani with Persistence and then Vicious/Merciless Companion, Predator's Sense as well as Brutal Takedown on Itumaak is one of my favorite companion builds.

The belt (or better: Firebrand) works for every priest. All Priests can use summoned weapons (mainly Firebrand) and all soulbound weapons to full effect with their deity's special weapon talent. Meaning they get +10 accuracy with them no matter what type of weapon it is. Soulbound and summoned weapons work with all weapon focuses and all of the different Priests' weapon talents. So you can use a Priest of Eothas with Firebrand (Great Swords) and a Priest of Skaen with the Grey Sleeper (Estoc) and a Priest of Magran could use Abydon's Hammer (War Hammer) - or whatever combo you like. That's because summoned/soulbound weapons are "universal". The good thing about the Berath/Tidefall combo is that Berathian Priests get the fitting weapon talent for Great Swords anyway - and that Tidefall works incredibly well with high Might.

Funnily enough a high-might Wizard with Persistence (and later also Caedebald's Blackbow) using Deletrious Alacrity & Citzal's Martial Power is also a very good ranged single target dealer. Ranger starts stronger but the high attacks speed of the Wizard + bow is quite strong later on. And you'll always have plenty of spells on top.

I played a melee Priest of Berath with Tidefall and it was pretty fun: You need Weapon focus Soldier, the Berathian weapon talent, maxed Might (generally a focus on maxing out Might via Aggrandizing Radiance + Champion's Boon or Minor Avatar and an item bonus etc.). Key is that Tidefall's wounding damage scales with Might - and Priests can have the highest Might score in the game. Tidefall also has life draining which heals you when you damage enemies. More details behind the link above (use that arrow button in the top right to jump right to my post).

That depends on your progression in the game. In the early game front-loaded classes are usually best (see Fighter for example) - while later on the per-rest casters are usually the most potent option. A good mix of low micromanagement and good impact is the Chanter. But they demand a slow playstyle imo. A late-ish game combo that is unmatched imo is Priest + Chanter + Cipher + Darcozzi Paladin + whatever (best would be Wizard + Druid I guess, but that's not low micro). Cipher casts Defensive Mindweb, Priest casts Withdraw on a Chanter who has two stacked Preservation items (Little Savior + Blaidh Golan) -> sky high defenses for everybody while the Chanter can still chant Dragon Thrashed for damage: Chanter's defenses + 10 from Little Savior & Outworn Buckler +100 from dual Preservation. Priest casts Devotions for the Faithful and Inspring Radiance -> everybody gets +30 accuracy. Paladin has Zealous Focus and Coordinated Attacks and a marking weapon (Shame or Glory or Cladhaliath) and Outworn Buckler and casts Inspiring Liberation on Cipher, Cipher casts Tactical Meld on Paladin. Both attack the same target -> Cipher gets +30 ACC from Priest, then +35 ACC from Paladin and +20 ACC from Tactical Meld: +85 accuracy. Charm/Dominate/Disintegrate/Paralyze everything easily, even dragons and such. The party is nearly untouchable while one party member has stellar accuracy. The other party members can just do what they always do without getting bothered. This is obviously not low micro - but it's a lot less fuzz than reloading countless times because late game encounters are too difficult. I guess the laziest yet very potent setup is 6 Priests who each cast a different buff at the start of combat (bit micro - you can leave this out in easier combats), then each cast Inspring Radiance, then each cast their symbol spell. It's not that intense micro because they are all doing the same so you can cycle through it quickly. The 6 Inspiring Radiances will stack their ACC bonus to +60 (on top of the other buffs you cast first) and all vessels (except fire imune) will be already dead. For the rest the symbol spells will work. At +60 accuracy they are devastating. I would mix up some different priests because there's a fair amount of fire immune enemies in the game. So stuff like Symbol of Berath, Symbol of Wael, Symbol of Skaen and so on. Before the highest levels Shining Beacon and such should do the trick. The early games will be easy because Inspring Radiance is accessible so early and +60 ACC makes most stuff a cakewalk. You can also outheal most nasty stuff like for example Ogre Druids with their pesky Plague of Insects. Best to kill those quickly - with Divine Mark and then melee or ranged attacks this should be easy enough I guess (+60 ACC and -25 deflection makes a virtual ACC bonus of 85 which should give you critical hits all the time against them). Another "plus" is that Preists don't have too many great talents to pick anyway so you can use stuff like Wound Binding and Field Triage to counter health loss if you feel you need it.

After the early game heavy armor has rel. low impact. But in the early game it's very helpful. And since Kana's chanter mechanics are slow anyway it doesn't hinder him too much, especially once he relies on damaging chants like Dragon Thrashed mostly (because those are not affected by action speed or recovery at all). Fun fact: normally, when wielding a single one handed weapon, you'll get +12 accuracy - but only for attacks with that weapon, nothing else. Except offensive chants (like The Dragon Thrashed) will also get +12 accuracy as soon as you are wielding a single one handed weapon. It's most likely an oversight, but it's there and it works. I personally often run (or ran) a Dragon Thrashed chanter with hatchet + (small) shield, but if I have trouble hitting enemies with the chant I can just switch to a single weapon setup and instantly gain 12 accuracy. Chants have a very interesting side feature: they still work while the Chanter is withdrawn (see Priest spell Withdraw). In fact, of you have a Chanter and a Priest in the party it makes sense to pick Withdraw as a spell mastery later on (turning it from a per-rest into a per-encounter spell). If you give Kana a shield with the Preservation enchantment (+50 to all defenses while stunned or prone - for example Little Savior or Ilfan Byrngar's Solace) and add another item with that feature (for example Blaidh Golan hide armor) they will stack, giving the Chanter +100 to all defenses. How's that cool while he is withdrawn and can't get attacked anyway? Because Cipher's Defensive Mindweb still works on him. This will give the whole part the defenses of the chanter - who has +100 to all his defenses. At the same time he's the only character who can contribute to the fight with his chants while being withdrawn. It's a pretty impactful combo. But you can also just place him in a doorway, cast withdraw (doorway's blocked yet he's untouchable) and he'll sing his chants for you while you use ranged or reach weapons to fight the enemies behind him. Another thing that is often overlooked is White Worms: the corpses that will explode will not get used up. They can explode over and over again. Turn of the "gib" option in the game menu - gibbed enemies leave no corpses - and don't leave or reload a map and you can lure enemies to a pile of corpses (or former enemies you already dispatched) and use White Worms over an over again on said corpses. Maps with many enemies (who leave corpses like kith) become very easy because you can just pile up more an more enemies at some choke point. At some point it's one-shots every time. You can clear out Raedric's Castle for enormous loot with this "trick".

Iirc it's 5 in-game years between PoE1 and Deadfire - so I guess doing something else between both games is totally okay.

Yes

Chanters like Kana are better in higher difficulties (where the fights last longer). The phrase/invocation mechanic is rel. slow (at least in the early game). However, in some situations even a low level chanter can be extremely powerful given the right circumstances (e.g. using White Worms in Raedric's Castle to clear the whole place). From lvl 9 on Kana can become a dps monster: Just sing "The Dragon Thrashed" and nothing else (overlapping phrases do stack on the enemies) and he will melt most enemies easily just by standing there. You can also use a pulling tactic to circumvent the slowness of his resource buildup: simply scout forward with a character (e.g. Edér) and trigger combat. The rest of the party including Kana wait further away (not in stealth mode because in stealth mode chanters don't sing). When combat starts Kana will start singing and building up phrases while Edér is pulling enemies towards the group. Once they arrive Kana can be ready to unleash his first invocation (e.g. the Phantom which is very strong in the early game).

Should be enough to have the save files, but I would just install Deadfire, make a character (with the PoE1 savegame stuff) and uninstall PoE1 after that - just to be sure. Should you lose your savegames: you can also always manually recreate the decisions you made in your PoE1 run when starting PoE2. There's an option where you walk through several questions regarding your PoE1 playthrough and how you decided. So even if savegames/import doesn't work you can still play the character you did in PoE1 (sort of) by recreating the decisions you made.

Right. Your "real" weapons don't transfer anything to your FF attacks. FF is still the same attack ability. Community patch just gave it the "tag" that it's not only a melee attack but a melee weapon attack now. By the way: it doesn't matter what weapon you are wearing, ranged or melee: if FF procs Swift Flurry and/or Heartbeat Drumming your main hand weapon will execute the additional attack. In case of ranged weapons there will be no further procs then (because SF/HBD only work on melee weapon attacks) - but you could in theory hold a Rod + Blast (= very slow recovery) but mainly use Forbidden Fist. When SF/HBD proc you would do a rod-shot + blast once (with 0 recovery).

Maybe True Love's Kiss ticks do also trigger the Frenzy enchantment? You'd get +5 MIG which could explain the increased dmg per tick maybe.

Not the level-1 stuff. It's fixed for the companions. Kana gets skeleton summons, Edér gets Knockdown and so on. You cannot chance that with normal retraining.

Ranger: highest accuracy Skald: additional phrases from crits Convinced? Check out Beast's Claw. It's great on a Stalker/Skald. Sun & Moon (dual headed flail) is a great weapon for a Skald/Stalker because it gives you 2 stacks of Beast's Claw with only one swing and also gives you 2 chances per swing to land a crit (and gain an additional phrase).

Jorge Salgado is an Area Designer, not a Narrative Designer. Lucien Soulban was the Narrative Designer who left (he was at Obsidian for a very short time only - maybe he missed Canada too much, no idea). Kate Dollarhyde is a nice replacement. What made me frown more is that Justin Bell left. On Twitter it sounded all nice and fair and as if no feelings were hurt and so on. But it's a big loss imo.

I think they all look pretty ridiculous. But that's only my personal feeling. I assume the devs did some research on polynesian/samoan/etc. "armor" and I guess that's kind of what it looked like. Still: don't like it. Way too much frippery. The Huana brigandines I like better.

The only problem I have with hide armors in Deadfire is the looks... 😑

Dread Howl is mutually exclusive with Nocturnal Vigor (-10% recovery at night). The hit to graze is mutually exclusive with +8 deflection while flanked.

It's def. good against freeze and burn damage (the passive DR of the belt and Woodskin's DR bonuses stack iirc) and also not bad against ranged attacks of all sorts because those tend to be pierce dmg mostly.

No, not really. I guess it uses the initial attack's PEN value - because I don't remember a full peneration crit followed by paltry ticks. But I don't have done any testing or research with this so I can't be sure.

Yes, the attack quality is determined during the initial strike - but will the following ticks all have *1.5 PEN if the initial strike crits? One can't check in the combat log (ticks don't get a log entry) so the only way would be to attack an enemy who has high corrode AR (high enough so that you underpenetrate without crit but penetrate with a crit). Also, what PEN does Toxic Strike work with? It doesn't say in the description since it's a Full Attack ability and the initial dmg will use the PEN of your weapon + PL scaling - but do the ticks just use that PEN from the initial attack (including passives and weapon quality and crit-bonus)? Or do they use their own? I really never tried to find that stuff out.

You can use Dread Howl whenever you want - whether you have focus or not. It's nice to have a long-lasting, 5m-base(!) radius frighten effect which not only prevents enemies from using their attack abilities but also lowers their Will by 10 (costs no focus). I thought is could be nice to cast a huge AoE frighten with high ACC that prepares enemies for other spells against Will. YOu will still have spend no focus after all. I guess if you're a Beguiler that isn't super interesting maybe, but for an Ascendant (who isn't ascended yet) it could be cool to have a cast that doesn't delay your ascension. Anyway I only was looking for a "great AoE + great ACC + long duration" combo and Monk/Cipher was the first that came to mind. Monk/whatever class that has no frighten effect with Willbreaker could also profit nicely from that armor I guess (bc. of Battered Mind/The Mind Makes Real).