Boeroer

My personal favorite party composition with official companions is: Edér as Swashbuckler (main tank, engagement) Xoti as SC Harvester of Gaun (buffing, damage, healing) Aloth as SC Wizard (CC, debuffing, damage) Tekehu as SC Watershaper (healing, damage, CC) MC Mostly because PL 8/9 spells of Priest, Wizard and Druid are lots of fun. But obviously there's tons of other nice compositions. It depends a lot on how you want to play. E.g. if I want to use AoEs a lot then the above composition is great - but I have to make sure to cramp enemies together in a spot (with the tank, pulling, luring etc). If I want to go for strong single target action instead then the above composition is not that good.

I forgot: you can get Ryona's Vambraces via dialogue, you don't need to fight the dragon.

Most spells which are ranged and targeted (meaning you have to pick an enemy and not the ground) work with penetrating shots afaik. Missiles, Mind Blades and so on. I don't have a comprehensive list so some might not - but if it's ranged and targeted there's a high chance that at least the initial impact will benefit. It's most interesting for multiprojectile/multihit/jumping spells.

Haha - reading that after learning how you beat the game including Megabosses was a bit like reading "I'm just a very casual basketball dude who happens to play in the NBA". Because it frees up several ability points which you can spend otherwise - is my interpretation. Rules may take away choice - which can liberate you from making tricky decisions.

I personally don't think Critical Focus is worth it. If you have a Priest even Zealous Focus is a bit meh and I'd go with Zealous Charge which is nice to have on a ranged char with shortish range (blunderbuss). Vielo Vidorio's base duration of 6 secs is way too short for my taste, I never pick it. I like to take Runner's Wounding Shot so I have one more gun ability per encounter in addition to FoD. I like to use Prestitigitator's Missiles, too - because Penetrating Shot works with it (without affecting the recovery) and that way Pallegina can unload two longer ranged attacks (Wrath and Missiles) before closing in with the blunderbuss attacks. If you take Intense Flames (and put a burning lash on the weapon) you should also get Scion of Flame imo. FoD (50%) + Intense Flames (25%) + Burning Lash (25%) (combined 100%) all get a raise of 20% then which is pretty good - also in order to help the individual lashes to overcome the burn DR or enemies. Before getting Silver Flash I like to use Lead Spitter because the Rending (+3 DR bypass) enchantment makes it more useful against non-low DR targets. I will add Ryona's Vambraces (+3 DR bypass) because with blunderbusses you want to have all the DR bypass you can get. But: lahes don't profit from DR bypass at all - so when using a blunderbuss with Flames of Devotion it's still best to target low-DR foes or switch to an arquebus for the high-DR foes which you want to shoot with FoD - you just get more dmg out of that. Pliambo per Casitàs ist one of he best ranged weapons for a Paladin imo, especially in combination with Coordinated Attacks. In order to switch from blunderbuss to arquebus I like to equip the Coil of Resoucefulness and add Quick Switch. That way I can switch to the best tool (blunderbuss against squishies, arquebus against tough ones) without any recovery penalty. If you have party members with DR-lowering abilities you can spare you the arquebus-fuzz most of times I guess.

PC Games (Germany) said "engaging story" - so maybe it isn't that shallow in that regard? They also wrote that it's pretty hard though.

Another party based CRPG with RTwP is Tower of Time. I can't say anything about it since I didn't play it but I hear good things and the Steam reviews are pretty good as well.

You don't have to play evil in Tyranny - so I don't understand why so many players state that as their main reason for not liking it. I do not like it a lot for several reasons, but the setting is not one of them. What about Pathfinder: Kingmaker? It has RTwP.

Yes, some modals don't fall into the same category (whatever sort of internal categories those are) so you can use them at the same time.

The main part of the DLC doesn't have any problems with loading times/screens - it's just gladiator-like: fight after fight after fight and some stuff on the island itself. That might be cool with some players and be lame for others, but that's not a design flaw. What you mean are the side quests that have you travel around the Deadfire to retrieve items (that weren't there before). It's the classical "go there and get me that" quest design - which can be pretty boring even if you are only requires to do it once in a while. Here's it's like a whole chain of those quests which not only are quite boring when we talk about quest design but also add a ton of loading screens as our said. You can totally complete the DLC without those side quests. I did so the first time because I really couldn't be bothered to sail around the Deadfire even more than I already did because I wanted to complete the playthrough. So I wouldn't say the DLC itself is designed badly - it's just those "retrieve" sidequest. Maybe wouldn't be a problem if Deadfire only had a quick-travel function. Still don't know why they didn't include that after all the complaints with long loading screens after PoE. It would have cut a lot of them especially with those types of quests.

It's Salvation of Time + Brilliant (from whatever source). Salvation of Time prolongs all beneficial effects, including Brilliant - Brilliant will give you your spell uses back, including Salvation of Time. You can use that cycle to build up minutes or hours of durations for all beneficial effects like Barring Death's Door, Blade Cascade (Scordeo's Edge) and so on.

He neither said it was easy nor were his instructions snarky. The only snarky thing in this thread is your reply. It's understandable that one can become frustrated - but don't take it out on Elric who's always been a very helpful member of this forum. The only thing that didn't make sense was this: I mean he's not going to get resurrected so usually it's enough to kill him once...

Uh? Retaliation triggering Carnage is new to me.

Yes, it was buffed "secretly" pretty late and without any change of description, information or patch note - shortly before the last patch was done. It's particularly awesome against Dragons or other enemies with fear auras (some banshees etc.) but excruciatingly bad for Barbarians who picked Threatening Presence - since you cannot switch that ability off (like you could switch from one shield to another). It's always there and active once you took it. In fights against Ciphers with Psychic Backlash you will be stunlocked until the rest of the party brings the Cipher(s) down. Only retraining would change that. That lead to the situation where I wouldn't take it anymore at all - although I nearly always used it before. It's kind of a just punishment though because I was one of the forum users who consistently complained about the 1/encounter limit of Psychic Backlash before.

I have this game but unfortunately never played it since I moved to a foreign country right after receiving it. I forgot that I have it and only discovered it lately when I moved back to Berlin. The TTRPG which is written by Josh Sawyer is in an alpha stage. Josh does give some status updates every now and then on Twitter - and last week he did a show & tell/q&a stream on Twitch. It looks really promising but is still far from finished since Josh has to write it in his free time. Here's the link to the vod:

Since he seems to live in Stockholm since 2016 I guess he's no longer connected to Obsidian. What does that mean? Why would you say that? Do you have examples? Who said or wrote that? I mean besides the hypothetically speaking post-Obsidian producer (still don't know what to make of that tbh). After reading the article you posted it seems that Shane DeFreest and Jessie Pridemore are the only ones who at least have a chance to really know what happened. Not that I want to dismiss the claims (and I would be interested to know if there are other women who claim similar things - since I despise such toxic predatory behavior which should be eradicated universally), but what lead you to the assumption(?) that the CEO of Obsidian and Paradox absolutely knew what happened - do you have special insights? If so please share! Imo: even if somebody approached Obsidian/Paradox and told them about the event (e.g. Pridemore herself or the model she was with) they would have had to ask DeFreest about his version of th story. If he said "Hey that's not what happened I swear!" and Pridemore seemlingly(?) didn't want to push this further back then - what could they really know and what were they supposed to do? Yes, it seems so.

No, Feargus is not directing Avowed. Afaik he's not directing anything but is completely occupied with his role as CEO. When I said that Avowed is his "baby" I meant that he wanted Obsidian to develop a first person RPG since Skyrim came out - and now successfully pitched the idea to Microsoft.

Chris Parker was Chief Development Officer and Senior Producer for New Vegas and additional producer for Outer Worlds. I want to mention Technical Designer Nick Carver. Not because he was on New Vegas or Outer Worlds (no idea) but because he's the one who gave us the new "4th" subclasses in Deadfire (like Forbidden Fist, Debonaire, Furyshaper, Steel Garrote and so on) which are all very enjoyable imo.

Easy to say if your studio is not on the brink of bankruptcy. Obsidian had a big project canceled before doing PoE. PoE (being a crowdfunded game) was the clutching at the last straw. Crunch and Deathmarch don't lead to less buggy games. If anything they lead to less polished/more buggy games because the amount of errors you will do increases a lot when overworked. Crunch also leads to talented people leaving the industry which reduces the quality of games even further in the long run. So overall it just hurts and is counterproductive. The reason why it's still done: money. You grind down your employees in order to make more money and/or get your money sooner. Earlier release means less cost (salaries mostly) and an earlier cash day. Sometimes that's inevitable because your studio is going to close if you don't make that money. Sometimes it's just greed (hello Red Dead Redemption). The reason is NOT that crunch or even deathmarches would create better software. They just don't. So there is no point in doing this except making more money. There was no deathmarch with PoE and Deadfire. With no game of Obsidian afaik. They publicly speak up against crunch culture as a studio and don't have high fluctuation with their employees. So I highly doubt that they would do deathmarches. I linked the definition of deathmarch above, doesn't matter what the word sounds like. There was no deathmarch at Obsidian. Not even Josh (who opposes constant crunch and deathmarches publicly and vehemently) said that. He spoke about limited crunchtimes that were bearable or "sprints" - but not a deathmarch. You can watch his talk about crunch where he says that he found a much better work/life balance around 2009 (which was before PoE and Deadfire were done): It's a good talk. I don't think Feargus Urquhart "threatened" to fire Josh and Adam - I believe it was more like "We will have to close Obsidian if this crowdfunding project doesn't work out".

2m is only the base radius. It scales with INT. Temple of Skaen has several ciphers for example. Also some bounties have them. Not all of them have Psychic Backlash. But anyway no big deal: just use another shield for those IF the shield triggers Psychic Backlash. I just wanted to mention it so that you don't run into that issue unprepared. Aila Braccia is an excellent backup shield especially against all sorts annoying ranged enemies - and it works in combination with Soul Mirror (Aila Braccia reflects 100% of ranged grazes and also converts them to misses, Soul Mirror reflects 50% of the direct misses).

Rooting Pain: depends if you like to spend (and gain back) a lot of wounds or if you like to keep 10 for stuff like Turning Wheel/Blood Testament Gloves. You might want to check if Redfield's Harbinger enchantment targets will (I don't remember). If that's the case I wouldn't wear it in fights with enemy ciphers. They sometimes have Psychic Backlash and that means you'll get stunned every few seconds. It's the same with Threatening Presence (Barb) and can completely mess up the fight, so a backup shield would be good to have.

Hi, you posted this on the wrong forum. This is PoE - but junks and naval combat are from Deadfire. I have no idea why you can't jibe - maybe low sail health? Or it's indeed the missing deckhand. I never encountered or read about that problem before though.

Just playing a Berserker/Streetfighter with Essence Interrupter (aiming for Anima's Legacy later on though) in a party and if I'm not hallucinating it doesn't matter who of my party members kills the enemy. So I guess the problem is switching to another weapon set? What was a bit new to me (but I have to admit I didn't use EI a lot in the past) was that even the summoned creatures can get the status effect and then spawn another summon and so on.

So let me understand this: as a confused cipher you can anchor Antipathetic Field to party members, too (instead of only foes)?

Did you mean Ectopsychic Echo @AndreaColombo? Because you need an enemy to anchor Antipathetic Field to. Can't see how Ringleader would help there. And no: you can't anchor Ectopsychic Echo on a charmed/dominated foe.