Boeroer

Yes, Skaen with its Baby Sneak Attack + Apprentice's Sneak Attack is like having a Fighter's base accuracy (with Stiletto, Club or any summoned or soulbound weapon that can be bound to a Priest) plus a Rogue's Sneak Attack basically. Firebrand works very well with a Priest of Skaen because of its high base damage and being a "universal" weapon (all weapon focus talents and also all of the Priests' weapon talents apply - but of course multiple weapon focuses won't stack). The resulting dmg per strike on average is pretty much the highest you can get with a Priest of Skaen. Although a huge flaming great sword is not really a subtle weapon - but on the other hand: great concealment. "But Mr. guard sir... Which weapon do you mean?" *poof*

I'm usually not one to rant, but this is not only unintuitive and obscure, it also seems stupid. I would love to hear the reasoning for this. Or maybe it's not intended? Even if one designed it like this for whatever reason: why not communicate it to the player? I'm baffled... PS: having said that - so far the weird quality-tier- and scaling mechanics have not kept me from enjoying the game, it gives me a great time so far despite me being really bad with those controls.

That was actually what I was hoping for: FDP drops out BSW gets in Merz is forced to form a coalition of CDU,SPD and Greens

That is correct. Usually I bring a Wizard with Chillfog, so the blinding is covered right from lvl 1 on - while it's not so easy to get a long lasting "+20 to all defenses" buff for the whole party. But it honestly doesn't matter much which Priest you pick. They are all great and the little differences of the symbol spells and other talents/abilities hardly make a difference overall - unless you want to go for a very specific build... like a great sword melee Priest or something like that.

Obsidian is a Microsoft Company, Justin Bell works at Sony Entertainment. I'm pretty sure they couldn't.

I'll take a wild guess and say: because he left Obsidian years ago and went to Sony.

@Aarik D, @Shyla - would it be possible to create a subforum for Avowed builds, game mechanics etc. like we have them for PoE, Deadfire and Outer Worlds?

I am def. not happy with the results, but it went as expected. CDU/SPD (which is the only realistic option now) always meant stagnation and hesitation in the past. Something we (and esp. Europe) really don't need right now. But maybe they'll prove me wrong. It also has direct consequences for my personal life because my wife is part of the higher ranks of the Foreign Ministry. Although here it's more important how decent and competent the actual minister is, it's less about the party. I met a lot of politicians in my life because of my attachment to the Foreign Ministry via wife, esp. when serving in foreign countries. Every party has decent people (cannot include AfD here though because I never personally met an AfD politician). Sometimes the politicians I generally agreed with and I thought are decent human beings turned out to be douches - and vice versa. It's the same with personnel and voters. --- My vote: I always consult the "Wahl-O-Mat" (since it's available), which is a website that presents a lot of political questions/demands to assess. Based on your (weighted) answers/assessments it shows you which parties' programmes do cover your views best. I can show you my results: I recommend this or similar tools to everybody who is about to cast a vote in an election. It helps to clear up the absolute chaos the media as a whole and esp. social media is causing and see which party is proposing what and if that's actually okay with you.

Oha, that's very useful info, thanks.

Symbol of Eothas is pretty good because the "+20 to all Defenses" stacks with individual defense buffs like for example Wizard's Mirrored Images/Arcane Veil etc. I like Priest of Eothas best anyway because there's so much Eothas/Gaun/Dawn/Sunshine related gear in the game you can wear (helmet, flail, mail armor etc.) and also there's lots of dialogue options etc. Two Priests are great in a party because you can stack Inpiring Radiance to +20 ACC and you can cut the buffing time for the party in half. A very useful paladin build against bosses is if you combine Coordinated Attacks with a marking weapon and then support your party member with the most reliable and sustainable disable/CC (Monk & Cipher mostly but any build with high ACC and good cc works). You will grant your party member +20 stackable accuracy passively which is awesome. If the party member uses a coordinating weapon then he/she even gets +5 ACC on top. If you flank the enemy it's like having additional +10 ACC. This makes locking up a boss very easy. Best case: your party member is a Cipher with Borrowd Instincts and Tactical Meld and uses a weapon that can prone on crit. There are several marking weapons in the game: Spectacular Spetum + Blade of the Endless Paths is the combination I would recommend most because they complemet each other so well in terms of weapopn focus and damge types, but there's also a pistol, an arquebus, Shame or Glory and Cladhaliath. I made a build that uses this Coordinated Attacks/Marking approach. It has some other features, too, but that is the core idea: Can easily be adopted to work with Pallegina. For example: put her in fat armor and get the Spactacular Spetum asap. Make her an offtank and mark her enemies so that the nearest ally can get +20 acc. againt them. Later add the Blade of the Endless Paths.

Hi! That depends on what you like better. Arcane Veil is limited per rest and can never be a spell mastery (per encounter) spell. So that's limiting. Also there's normal spells that function in a similar way (Mirrored Images etc.) and don't stack with it. But if you are melee-focused and if you tend to rest often then it's great to have. Parasitic Staff and Spirit Lance both have very high base damage (twice the amount of other two handed weapons) and the Staff is of exceptional quality right at lvl 1 - which is very powerful and feels just great in the early game. Also spares you a lot of other spells per rest. The Lance is superb and has an AoE - and it has speed! In combination with Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, some damage bonuses (Two Handed Style, Might, Apprentice's Sneak Attack, Savage Attack etc.) you can reach very good melee/AoE dps. The pinnacle would be to gain Gauntlets of Swift Action so you could reach 0 recovery with the Spirit Lance. Which is kind of bonkers. A melee Wizard has to be more sturdy than a ranged one, even if he oly operates from the second row - so you need to either invest in defensive talents and/or abilities/spells and use them. This can be Arcane Veil, but you can also do without it. Melee Wizard needs more micromanagement. Blast is a passive so it will always be there. It becomes very potent in combination with Combusting Wounds and Kalakoth's Minor Blights (summoned wand-like weapon): because every hit in the AoE of Minor Blights will cause a Blast, you can have a LOT of damage rolls that all trigger Combusting Wounds - if you manage to hit many enemies with Minor Blights+Blast. Lots of damage rolls (no matter how weak) in combination with Combusting Wounds melts all mobs but the fire immune ones. Good crowd control is nice to have (sturdy front line, disables, using choke points etc.) so you can reach many enemies with the AoE. This approach can work with a glass-cannon build. If you get rushed you need a plan B, but you don't have to be somewhat sturdy at all times like a melee wizard would. For a main character I think the more fun approach is the melee way - if you like that in the first place. Because one tends to micromanage the main character a lot more than the others anyways. The Blast Wizard is better for companions and adventurerers imo because you don't have to move and position them a lot.

Haha yeah - well she was known outside of France, too: for being in a relationship with Johnny Depp for about 15 years I believe, end of the 90s until 2010ish or so. But maybe that's too long ago for the younger forum members. Some of her songs were hits in Germany (and the UK), too.

I can joyfully report that the motion sickness problem is much better now. What is helping are the many sensational views in this game, holy moly. The combat is still too wild for me, but level 2 of Steady Aim improved it a lot. I also learned to find spots where enemies usually don't go - so I can camp and shoot them relatively unbothered. In confined spaces it's still a panic-induced dodgefest where I (very) often throw random grenades because my nervous index finger slipped. 😄 I prefer the bow because I can spend a lot more combat time in slow motion. But the guns sound and feel awesome, especially the arquebus. So I often use it for an opening shot. I'm thinking about adding Shadowing Beyond to get out of tight situations, but I have to say it's hard for me to use active abilities - because my index finger needs to find the fitting number key blindly - and when it returns I throw a grenade instead of moving forward. 😂 I thought I could profit from Arcane Veil's projectile reflection - but I almost never use it because I have to look at the keyboard to reliably hit the right key. So I usually restrict myself to Binding Roots (which is great). Now I wonder if I would use Shadowing Beyond at all. Maybe using a gamepad would improve things? I think I have an old PlayStation Controller lying around somewhere. Besides the controls I am starting to really enjoy this game. If it would do exploration etc. in first/third person (the views! 😍) and zoom out to top down/isometric style TB or RTwP combat it would be THE game for me. Cheers!

Btw: because I cannot play Avowed for long bc. motion sickness (and generally finding those types of first person games meh in the first place) I started a Shifter/Kind Wayfarer build in Deadfire just to see how it plays in the early and mid game (before all the Nature's Terror/Sacred Immolation shenanigans) - and it's surprisingly good. You get the Ring of Focused Flames so early and that boosts your FoD accuracy so much (in comparison to enemies' deflection) while you also heal at the same time (white flames). And you add either bleeding dmg (Boar) without recovery malus or have great speed (Cat) while having decent armor "for free". I would totally recommend this to new players who don't want to wait a long time until a build comes together. Maybe the mid game until Sacred Immolation is more boring, haven't reached that point yet. What I also learned is that bringing an Arcane Archer/Beckoner hireling with Essence Interrupter to Gorecci Str. and the Digsite is the best thing you can do imo (maybe besides AA/Ancient). Animal Companion + Essence Interrupter "summons" in the middle of the enemy lines (after some Imbue missile shots) + (what feels like too many) skeletons or wurms turns all those difficult encounters into cakewalks.

One of the founders was named Vanessa iirc.

Okay I edited the title. Hope this clears things up. 😄

I guess my title accidentially turned out to be the equivalent of a klickbaity youtube thumbnail.

Ah, I can see how one could interpret the title like that. No, I met my wife in my (shared) house when we were students. My flatmates and me had rented a whole house and one of them had build a fancy home cinema in the basement. We often invited friends (and friends of friends) for movie night. And one of those people was/is my wife. But yesterday I found her again - in that old magazine.

My plan was to build a Ranger mostly but with the Wizard's Blackbow and Spirit of Decay and so on. Unfortunately my progression in the game is veeery slow so far. The lack of info/explanation/numbers is not helping. I would like a mod that added all that useful info (combat log etc.).

PS: my wife is 40yo now and doesn't want to look like Julia Stiles anymore.

Hi, check this out! We found a big box in my father-in-law's attic and in it - among other stuff - was an old German youth magazine. "Why did he keep this?" we asked ourselves - until we discovered this: 😂 Awesome

I don't own a Steam Deck, but I run Avowed on a rel. old PC (2018) with Linux & Steam's Proton - so the same layer that the Steam Deck uses. It runs well on medium graphic settings (with a few above medium). My PC (32GB) has only half the RAM a current Steam Deck has (64 GB). I'd say based in my experience Avowed should run well enough on a Steam Deck. There are also plenty of sites that tested this and tweaked the settings right during early access, here's an example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2025/02/13/avowed-runs-well-on-steam-deck-but-do-this-first/ So all in all you will be fine it seems. 👍

I already started with head bob turned off.

Yes, it helps - but not enough to make it go away completely. In addition to that I also struggle with the controls - or how combat plays in general. I mean not in a way that I couldn't progress (I started on normal and I managed to win all fights so far) - more in a way that I don't find it fun to play. I never liked first-person shooters etc. in the first place because of motion sickness, but now I guess I'm also too old for that "action" and skill stuff. In Skyrim I could circumvent most of it with a bow, maxed stealth, sneak attacks and some illusion magic. But so far this doesn't seem to be an option in Avowed. When I shoot enemies with a ranged weapon they like to leave the melee distraction and come right at me - and then the dodging and running starts, which drastically worsens the motion sickness. Hmpf... Maybe getting the right abilities such as Shadowing Beyond and Steady Aim will improve things for me, we'll see.