Boeroer

To be fair: it's really hard to screw up a Monk build. While most classes have some pitfalls (or let's say ditches) the Monk's stuff is nearly 100% great. Okay, you can make inferior choices if you want, but they are very obvious (like having no engagement and then picking Parting Sorrow or having low deflection and picking Imagined Pain or using a ranged weapon and picking melee-only stuff).

Cool info.

That may be the case, but my point was that you can get the expensive exceptional/superior loot a LOT earlier of you don't try to board but simply sink the ships (due to the reasons I explained above). So while you may get a bit more coin out of boarding instead of sinking ships it wouldn't matter much since it would mean you get that money a lot later - when you usually swim in money anyways. Sinking superior captains/ships very early is what has the most impact on your "money game" by far. Also raising mechanics asap, getting the Burgler's Gloves, grab Thieve's Putty and go lockpicking superior or even legendary gear (see Grave Calling in Crookspur etc.). If you have Bounding Boots you need no stealth. Simply be in stealth, then target the jump right beside the chest but pause before you execute. Unpause/pause until you see the landing circle, then cancel the action (Leap gets cancelled, no rest use gets substracted but you still land where you aimed - without any recovery and sound) and click on the chest. You will be able to steal without getting noticed. This trick is useful for other things, too (like being a solo Assassin with not much stealth or just getting past enemies unseen) but it's also great for looting stuff from containers and also for pickpocket. Barbarian can do without boots obviously once he gets Leap as ability. There are at least two pairs of Bounding Boots. So if you screw up the cancellation process you can still stack them in the stash in order to refill the per rest uses.

Ususally you use a so-called tank or a line of sturdy front liners to bind enemies in melee. You can stay in stealth until all enemies engaged with your frontliner(s). That way the enemies won't be motivated to rush to you (the frail wizard). Then you can target/hit the enemies around your tank/frontliners reliably. Usually enemies won't break engagement to run around then, but it happens. Of course casting a CC spell from stealth is another way. For example cast Binding Web on the enemies from stealth. They can't move then and it's easier to hit them the way you want to. A third option is to use choke points. A doorway, a narrow path in the wilderness and so on. Block the choke point with a sturdy frontliner and all enemies with gather before him. Then cast your stuff on them. By the way: the best lvl-1 spell for wizards is Chillfog. Makes the game a lot easier. But it is crucial to control enemy movement in one of the ways above, else it's not very effective. I don't use AI. But I'm on PC, so it's less of a hassle to micromanage every party member I guess.

I think (iirc) there were more people that also didn't receive the discs on the first try. But after some back and forth they came in eventually. If you didn't say anything back then I guess the logistics guys just had to assume you got them.

You don't need that much INT as with mortars because you are only attacking single targets (no AoE). I wouldn't drop it too low (you don't want the afflictions you cause to be over too quickly) but you certainly don't need it to be very high either. High MIG is nice with guns. It's not the top priority attribute to raise (go for DEX and PER first) but it certainly doesn't hurt to have it high(ish). If you have no problems with class cannon builds you can drop RES and CON to 3 and put max on DEX, PER and MIG and the rest on INT. You will get down quickly if you get attacked but you can prevent that with Escape/Evasion/Smoke Veil which is part of the fun (for me at least). If you don't like that then don't drop RES and CON all the way. By the way: two items that you might want to have besides the Red Hand are the Sharpshooter's Garb from Maia and Acina's Tricorn.

All abilites that make sense for a ranged gun user. So besides the universal ones (that work with ranged or melee attacks) like Crippling Strike, Deep Wounds etc. stuff like Marksman, Gunner, Driving Flight and so on. I also like to have Escape AND Evasive Roll to be able to reposition a lot. Gun users can cancel reload and immediately use Escape or Evasive Roll to move away from enemies or in order to get into a better shooting position. I personally would also pick Smoke Veil because you can use it to instantly remove yourself from the interest of enemies. Unlike Escape/Evasive Roll where enemies still keep you as current target and might want to follow you (which can be annoying at times) Smoke Veil let's them pick a new target. That leaves you enough time to reposition and run away or to reload in safety. Usually a double barrage from the Red Hand is enough to end most single enemies who rushed you. Unlike Shadowing Beyond which breaks from DoTs like Deep Wounds Smoke Veil does not. So it's safe to use with Deep Wounds, Arterial Strike, Gouging Strike and/or Toxic Strike. SV is also cheaper and comes earlier. By the way: the Double Tap enchantment of the Red Hand will destroy two vessels if you use it with Driving Flight (and the second vessel gets hit twice by the jumps as well). I would always pick that one. But Arterial Strike + Knockback (although the weaker enchantment) is fun as well and contrary to Double Tap works against all enemies (that are not immune to push effects). Combine with Boots of Speed, Escape and Evasive Roll to let enemies bleed out.

You don't even have to board. When sinking a ship you get basically the same loot. Usually it is a lot easier to sink significantly overleveled ships (that carry the really expensive stuff) than winning the same overleveled board fight. That's because char level and captain's/crew's "nautical" level aren't connected at all - you can level up your captain skills and those of your cannoneers a lot faster than your char level. Master cannoneers can trigger special events when hitting which force the enemy to reassign crew. If you fire often enough and hit reliably the enemy often gets trapped in a loop of reassignments and is not able to fire the cannons regularly anymore, making winning easy.

I just don't use consumables (except basic food when resting and unguents for the occasional hard skillcheck) when playing with a party. It's not because I want a bigger challenge but because I don't need them at all and using them is the bigger incovenience compared to not enjoying their bonuses. I usually only retrain when I messed up something. I don't even retrain when playing solo. I also don't use scrolls and figurines solo but I will use potions.

It is ticking whatever you do (except if you pause the game obviously). But of course crawling a dungeon in 2 hours (real time) takes less time than let's say resting for 8 hours or sailing from A to B. The Eothas Challenge is pretty tight afaik. So you not only have to try to rest as little as possible, you also have to plan your sailing routes beforehand to a certain extend because travelling around pointlessly will most likely lead to a lost game.

I wouldn't pay too much attention to that number. It can't incorporate conditional accuracy bonuses and Marked Prey is one. If you want to check what really happens with your accuracy you should execute an attack and then check the combat log. If you hover over an entry like "<char> hit <enemy>..." and hold shift you will see a detailed list of the accuracy bonuses that lead to that attack resolution. Marked Prey is a rather complex ACC bonus because it only works for you and you animal companion although it's a hostile effect on the enemy. Seems to have been too complicated to show this in that basic accuracy "tooltip" - so I wouldn't even consider it a visual bug but an intentional omission. Afaik it works for every attack roll you make (on that enemy), no matter if AoE or direct attack.

There is a build-in God challenge for that. It's called the Eothas Challenge. There's a challenge mode for every god (on top of solo, expert, trial of iron) that adds a certain twist. You can activate as many challenges as you like. In order to do this you have to click on the little stylized face on the bottom of the game menu (where you can click on new game/load game etc.) before starting a new game.

You have to kill the big ones first (and quickly) since they are healing the small ones. Like in every other encounter basically: kill the healers first.

Oh? I thought Stone of Power stacked with everything but I'm also not sure... ...quot erat demonstrandum when it comes to my claim that I may never know all stackings.

Speaking of confused: you mean Woodskin. Yes, when it comes to stacking there's only two things once must know *cough* - passives stack with everything, actives don't - active bonuses that are not in the same "category" will stack. BUT! While this sounds easy enough it comes with two big problems: 1. what bonus is passive or active? 2. how can I determine the category of a bonus? While passive/active is easy enough to determine on the ability tree there a a lot more bonuses that are not in there, for example from items (passive), weapon proficiency modals (active), potions (active) and so on. And to determine the category one can't help but either read up a lot of stuff on the internet or play the game a lot. There are some general rules that apply and are easy enough to remember (like two active bonuses that affect the exact same stat never stack) but there are also so many cases where you wouldn't think it stacks but it does (see +x to one defense vs +y to all defenses). Afaik there is no comprehensive list of bonuses with their stacking rules. Maybe we could have made one here but it's just a LOT to unpack... Then there's also stuff that always stacks - like conversions (miss to graze to hit to crit) or power level bonuses (am I right here?). I still don't reliably know the stacking of every effect in the game and probably never will.

I think he meant buffs that cover the whole party or are at least accessible for all party members (e.g. via consumables). I think as far as consumables go there's only Deadeye and Potion of Deftness. Then there's pets. They are especially interesting if you unlocked Edér's pet slot with Berath's Blessings: Atlas, Harley: +3 ranged ACC to party Blinky, Nikki: +3 melee ACC to party Boras: +3 spell ACC to party Flame Nāga Hatchling: +3 fire ACC to party Frosty: +4 freeze ACC to party Obsidian Wurm: +3 flanked ACC to party Retina: +5 ACC against distant enemies (>4m) to party Sky Dragon Wurm (only if you didn't kill the Sky Draon in PoE) :+3 universal ACC to party There are also items/consumables/pets with conversions (miss to graze, graze to hit, hit to crit) which kind of work like an ACC buff but always stack with everything.

I played a dual mortar monk from start to finish on PotD in a party - as well as a mortar Shadowdancer and a SC Rogue. Dual mortar is no problem with WotW. Enduring Dance is enough to be able to trigger WotW with very little downtime. If you feel the pause is too long just use Mortification otS. In a party it's usually no problem to have a few secs of downtime. The good thing about dual mortars is that you can apply Blinding Smoke (which is ridiculous in combination with Avenging Storm since every cone attack of BS triggers a lightning on every enemy it hits - and remember that every enemoy in the mortar AoE can trigger a Blinding Smoke come - even though it doesn't cause damage itself) while the jump from Fire in the Hole's Chain Shot usually doubles the stacks of Resonant Touch that you apply with it. Most important for a dual mortar Monk is INT, not MIG. And DEX is a lot more valuable on a mortar monk for me personally. Stuff like WotW and Flagellanth's Path still have noticable recovery, even in lightish armor. And I want to keep enemies stunned as long as possible. MIG doesn't help there. 15 is def. enough. +15% addtive dmg don't make a lot of difference for me. Even with slight underpenetration and lowish base damage (which is somewhat countered by the dual damage of mortars which often prevents underpenetration in the first place) you are always applying a ton of Resonant Touches as long as you make sure that the enemies are not scattered all over the place but stand near each other. Monk/Rogue I found to be inferior after the mid game - as mortar user at least. Applying Sneak Attack, afflictions and DoTs in an AoE is really nice, but it can't hold up against Resonant Touch + WotW. If Avenging Storm gets added the Monk has the huge advantage of the AoE*AoE mechanic of WotW. One would think that the mid game is more fun than SC Monk. But is was not. I guess because Stunning Surge of the Monk is so good with mortars in the mid game (remember that you get that a lot earlier as SC than as MC) that most stuff the Rogue can do feels a bit inferior. Hard CC so early in the game with a very likely refund (hitting multiple enemies with 3 AoEs per use is very, very likely to crit at least once) is very good. A great thing though with a Shadowdancer is that Blinding Smoke immediately unlocks Deathblows. Still not as good as WotW + RT but nice high level stuff. SC Rogue (doesn't matter that much if Streetfighter or Assassin, both work fine at the highest levels) was nearly as impactful and fun in the late game with Vanishing Strikes - because you can trigger Backstabs on all surrounding enemies all the time (because the invisibility doesn't break) - but during midgame I found it a bit unfun (obvidously Streetfighter is way better here than Assassin). The biggest advantage of a Monk over a Rogue is the replenishable Wound system over the limited Guile. The way bigger AoE is also a big plus with mortars. When it comes to a gun build that was most entertaining/fun one during my time with Deadfire, nothing comes close to SC dual mortar monk. At least for me.

You can't. Thaos is the end of the game. After jumping into the pit there's no coming back. You'd need to load a savegame from before jumping into the pit. White March is a DLC that is best played at mid levels (from lvl 8 on). It's not an expansion that you play after the main game is done but rather interwoven additional content that you can play parallel to the main plot line like a big side quest.

You can't compare PoE/Deadfire with D:OS I/II when it comes to loading times. The first are 2D/3D hybrids that have huge high-res, pre-rendered handdrawn images as maps that get filled with 3D objects while the latter are a pure 3D games. Naturally loading those high-res pictures from disk takes a lot longer than rendering some 3D-objects which the maps are composed of (which doesn't include a lot of I/O). That's the reason why SSDs improve PoEs' loading times drastically. If PS5 has a SSD then it should load PoE games a lot faster. Still not as fast as lightning but it's a noticable improvement. This is already true if you buy a SSD for the PS4.

^ what he said.

Thank you. I wouldn't allow other classes to use specific trinkets. Priest trinkets would be for Priests only etc. Those trinkets should work like grimoires basically - which successfully try to allow a broader spell portfolio for wizards. I don't want to blur the lines between classes further (like multiclasses and a bunch of Priest spells that are borrowed from Wizard/Druid without even changing the name already do). It's a class-based system after all. Blur the lines too much and one could as well play a classless system (what I would prefer anyway but this game it not made for that I guess). That's why I would really like to give those "borrowed" spells/abilities unique names and even icons if possible. Even change their mechanics a bit. Just so that the average player wouldn't even notice that it's "recycled" material.

found it: And so on. Some of those were remembrances to PoE items, characters or abilities and bring back stuff from there (e.g. Skaens Baby Sneak Attack)

I made some trinkets themed around death (so Berath actually), light (Eothas) and so on. They should be here in the forum somewhere but I also still might have the original textfile. Stuff for the Berathian trinket included Touch of Death (Druid) and Cloak of Death (Wizard) iirc. But I would not use the original name and icon since these "borrowed" abilites from other classes are hard copies in most cases anyway so you can just use the mechanic and FX but give it a more unique flair by providing a unique name, icon (maybe just tinted or otherwise slightly edited in order to make it simple) and description. The ethasian trinket included a lot of chanter and paladin stuff - everything with light basically. We also discussed that there are spells that usually never get picked because they are too situational or limited and you wouldn't want to "waste" a precious ability point on them (for example Liturgies etc.). So I made some trinkets that provided those spells like a grimoire would. That way you can bring them whenever you like and also switch trinkets from the quick slots for other situations.

That much is obvious. That completely ignores that inflow of money is not an automatic, endless stream. Smaller studios without recent world success titles under their belt have to ship or perish. Especially studios who only kept their head over water because of a rel. small (in terms of budget and revenue) crowdfunding title. Just calculate 100 studio devs getting full pay for 9 months (without any inflow of money in the meantime). If every one of them costs 2000$ a month you would have to spend 1.8 Million which you maybe don't have. It may be the difference between closed studio and buggy release. Also publishers are usually the ones more concerned with shipping while devs would really like to spend more time on bugfixing. It would be absolutely unreasonable to throw money at a game that nobody plays anymore and/or a game that was'nt successful right from the start. It may be nice for the players - but in the long run it wouldn't benefit them because their beloved studio is broke. The examples you name were huge successes which started strong (so there's a lot of money in the bank to use to keep interest high). Note how PoE (good sales given the niche genre) was supported a lot longer than Deadfire (poor sales). As the owner of a company with employees you have to pay you can't make decisions solely on what you like or what your customers might like. Especially if you're on the brink of bankruptcy. Technically TOW and PoE/Deadfire are VASTLY different games. TOW was done as a pure 3D game with the Unreal engine (which costs a lot lot more than Unity3D which was used to make PoE and Deadfire) while the latter was a 2D/3D hybrid with bre-rendered maps etc. which was never done before like that. Also often he majority of high-priority bugfixing (the bugs that let the game crash, not the gameplay bugs) stems from framework/middleware. I guess Unreal is more mature and thus more robust than Unity3D. *experiencing pure second-hand embarrassment*

I played a Bleak Walker/Arcane Archer once and it was pretty good. But a Rogue/Ranger of any kind would also do great ranged damage.