Boeroer

A Phantom with Hand Mortar (Blinding Smoke enchantment) can distract enemies in an AoE (which includes flanked) and thus can help to trigger Brilliant Tactician. But the cone has friendly fire. If you put Squid's Grasp or Kapana Taga into the offhand (or wear stuff like Gipon Prudensco) it's also immune to flanking.

Iirc Mask of the Weyc stacks with Mirrored Images and all that but not Escape (maybe because same ability ID or something). It also gets triggered passively. Great Escape is indeed giving you an active ability as soon as you drop below blooded or so. It may be that it behaves as Escape itself and doesn't stack.

Didn't know that! Thanks for sharing.

Also Corpse Eaters can't eat gibbed enemies because there's no corpse left.

Oops

Yeah, that ^

Huh?

Right. Always forget about that... Also recovery penalty from armor isn't a big deal then.

Oh my god... 😱

As damage dealing character your RES is indeed not too important. Focus on DEX, MIG and PER and also INT - those are the attributes that help with dealing damage (INT does it indirectly via longer durations and bigger AoE). MIG and INT also influence the healing you do which is benefical to your self-healing abilites (heal more points per tick with high MIG and last longer with high INT). You have to see at what point your character feels too squishy. At that point I'd use thicker armor. Armor is the most important defensive stat if you don't want to stack deflection and the other defenses (and build a tank). If enemies underpenetrate you will love a lot longer. Fighters can stack a pet like Abraham or Cutthroat Cosmo with Armored Grace which helps a big deal with the armors' recovery penalty. Despite the recommendation the game gives you multiclassing isn't complicated at all. Since single class Paladins don't have the most awesome high level abilites in general I personally would pick the Crusader. They can be sturdy as hell even when build for dealing damage and have more resources (Zeal and Discipline) at their disposal which means more special attacks with Flames of Devotion or Knockdown and so on.

I have the same "problem" with every Wizard multiclass: I want to only use Grimoires to spare points for the non-spell abilities - and it works. But I still end up picking some spells I know I will use in every fight - because it's more convenient. Grimoire switching isn't a big deal but sometimes it's just annoying. Also you really have to manage which grimoires to buy/find/steal and then equip them accordingly. Once you find unique grimoires and equip them because the spells in them are cool your whole grimoire-portolio gets toppled over. Tl;dr: The most ability-efficient way is to use Grimoires only but I allow myself a few spells here and there out of convenience.

Psion in general is a subclass that turned out to be way better than I initially thought it was. But I also think that it seems it's especially beneficial in multiclass setups, not so much as single class.

If you have two of them (1 exported) you can stack them in the stash and they reload. Same with Necklace of Fireballs, Missile Gloves, Stone of Power and so on. If it has charges or per-rest uses you can form stacks and they get reloaded. Most of them have multiple instances in the game so you don't even need to export anything. Having two Rings of Reset is cheesy of course but it's the only way to make a fun build with Vengeful Defeat (which is otherwise too punishing because of the injuries).

Voidwheel's Necrotic Lance profits from all dmg bonuses that also would apply to the weapon (+dmg from weapon quality, Sneak Attack and so on). That makes it devastating, especially on Rogue or Rogue/something (once it procs). I choose Effort as a Wizard/something from time to time to give it to an Essential Phantom. Besides the raw DoT it also can do kind of a "Vengeful Defeat" where it attacks all foes in range when the Phantom gets slain. That enchantment (it's called Vaillant Demise iirc) does stack with other on-knockout effects like Vengeful Defeat from Barb. You can get two Rings of Reset with an exported "mule" character and then go KO three times in every encounter without suffering an injury.

The problem is that Deadfire barely made any money. Too few players bought it. So patching it forever is burning money with a game that not that many people wanted to play in the first place. Stardew Valley is a completely different story. That one developer gained so much money with its huge success that there's enough budget to patch it until the sun burns out I guess... Also the motivation is different: if you see that millions of players still play your game then it's obviously less of a discussion wether the game should still receive updates or not. See PoE in comparison which sold better than Deadfire and was updated for a longer period of time.

They don't. They are meant as a challenge for the most advanced players. Some people like those challenges a lot - and it's cool if they feel happy once they beat the Megabosses. It's just not that appealing to me. Just one/two times to see if I can do it in general and then "begone!".

I think they could do both: not delving in superepic godslayer powerfantasy AND come up with a story where the protagonist feels more in control of what happens with the main plotline. I personally don't have problems with the storyline of Deadfire, but I'm old(er) and have had my fair share of "peasant boy becomes uberman" stories - don't need anymore of those. But I remember I liked those when I was younger, too. Some sort of (substantial) influence would still be nice though.

Thank you for voicing your criticism in such a reasonable way even though you are disappointed. Too often it's all ranting, hyperbole and profanity - your post is not. 👍 Yeah quite unusual storyline. I think they planned Deadfire as a cliffhanger and would have resolved this in PoE3 (which might never happen). Which might have worked out then. The decision to omit the Guardian when helping the Water Dragon was wrong in my opinion. There have been so many bug reports from confused players who expected a guardian fight because they didn't read the sheets on the way to Ukaizo properly or simply didn't expect such a "cheap" solution to that encounter. About the costs of building the wheel: I don't think that many sacrifices were needed to build the wheel itself. The main part of the mass scarification of Engwithans (and Huana) seems to have been used to create the soul constructs we call "gods".

Megabosses are a pain in the rear for me. I only did them once or so and then steered around them. The gain is too little for the pain in my opinion. SSS is not that hard for a high level party. Maybe players have to adapt a bit because some of the fights require you to NOT burn through your resources asap - but to be very patient and use resources in a meaningful way. For example the fight against the hordes of guls: it's very ineffective to mop the floor with the first wave while burning through all your resources - because there will be so many more waves. You have to keep your resources for the times where you really, really need them. Classes with replenishable resources like Cipher, Chanter, Monk and Bloodmage have an advantage in those fights (like with Megabosses, too).

Effort's raw DoT doesn't stack with itself - while Bleeding Cuts do (Saru Sichr's slow ticking poison also does). That's why Bleeding Cuts (or Saru Sichr) is a lot better if you are hitting some high HP foe for a longer period of time (most bosses etc.). Same problem with Stalker's Patience (which even has a higher raw DoT. Still great weapons though. If you are facing more than one enemy it also doesn't matter too much that the DoTs don't stack: you can simply alternate your targets and make sure you get the most out of the DoTs (which again: are indeed quite strong).

If you want a more forgiving (sturdy) druid who's still dealing good Spiritshift melee damage you can pick the Boar form. It regenerates during Spiritshift (heals you over time) and it also has an automatic wounding lash on its attacks which is very strong (and even scales with MIG, so I would raise that). MIG also scales the healing in general. You can then pick "Veteran's Recovery" as talent which stacks with the Boar form's regeneration, giving you decent healing over time (better than a Fighter). This helps a big deal in the early game where you don't have that much healing spells to cast. In the late game the healing effect alone isn't as impactful anymore - but the wounding lash keeps being awesome until the end (because your natural weapons scale very well and the wounding lash is a multiplicative dmg bonus). Shod-in-Faith boots help further with the self-healing of this druid. You can raise Survival and pick the bonus "healing received" effect from camping and then also wear gear that raises "healing done" and "healing received". Those all work with the boar regeneration and Veteran's Recovery and the boots. It's a way to "scale" the healing up for later levels. It also all influences your own healing spells like Moonwell of course. If your health bar starts dropping low you can rest (obviously) or drink potions of Infuse with Vital Essence. It's a well-rounded druid approach for a druid in my opinion. Every spiritshifter should get the Wildstrike Belt. Its mechanics are a bit weird. Suffice to say that it's way better than it's description suggests.

Flame Nagas have extra low burn armor so that you a) won't underpenetrate with burn damage and b) get tricked into thinking "Haha - low burn AR! Let's roast them!" Dorudugan is the same. Tanking him in melee leads to him healing up from his own burning AoE attacks. Rekvu's Scorched Cloak does the same for you if you suffer from an injury. BUT: if you step on fire traps (e.g. in Sandswept Ruins) you will still get the Serious Burn Injury. Three of those and your run will be fried. I reported that illogical mechanic in the early days after release but I think it never got fixed.

Everything that pulses should trigger it with every pulse (that hits): Chillfog, Wall of Flames, Tanglefoot, Wicked Briars and so on.

Why unlike PoE1? There it's the same: you cannot play the DLCs after the main game since there's no return from jumping into the pit in Twin Elms which leads to the endgame.