Boeroer

There are only two mortars: "Hand Mortar" and "Fire in the Hole". Both are Serafen's guns. He comes with Hand Mortar and after finishing his quest he'll get Fire in the Hole. Fortunately Serafen's quest is very easy to complete and also quickly done: Go to Fort Deadlight Open the chest in the room which is right north of the harpsichord, this will give you a hint to go to the Luminous Bathhouse Go to the Luminous Bathhouse and talk to Undyne Go to Sayuka and find Remaro not far from the harbor (northeast up the stair) - he will give you the gun. Cool cool cool cool no doubt no doubt Enchantments: for Hand Mortar I usually pick Blinding Smoke because it triggers Avenging Storm (which I get from Heaven's Cacophony helm). But it does friendly fire so be careful. However: i think it's the better enchantment even though Point Blank does work pretty nicely with Whispers of the Wind and Flagellanth's Path. So if you are not using Avenging Storm it might be a good alternative. For Fire in the Hole it's Chain Shot. It adds a projectile jump which includes the AoE. There is no question that this is better - especially because with WotW and Flagellant's Path you are not actually reloding (only recovery) - so the alternative enchantment doesn't even work well. Also double AoE is better for Stunning Surge because more chance to crit = refund of mortification. Key abilitiies are: Lightning Strikes (Swift Flurry doesn't work) : +15% lash works with ranged weapons Two Weapon Style Duality of Mortal Presence (INT - Turning Wheel doesn't work with ranged weapons) : the AoE of both mortars will grow with INT Enduring Dance (more ACC = more crits and auto-wounds) Thunderous Blows (PEN) Stunning Surge (lots of hit rolls -> high chance of crit => refund. Also AoE stun effect of course) Flagellant's Path (no reload but recovery, fires both mortars with AoEs at target) Razor's Edge (more ACC) Resonant Touch (every AoE hit roll will add a stack of Resonant Touch to enemies) Whispers of the Wind (every jump will fire the gund + AoEs which leads to ridiculous stacking of Resonant Touch - best if enemies stand near to each other!) Against single targets you can use normal blunderbusses or summon the Long Pain. Most important item for Whispers of the Wind is Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak. Ring of the Marksman is nice. I also used Ring of Overseeing and Aloth's armor - but other stuff also works fine. I tried to stack a lot of INT, too.

Or maybe not even Troubadour but Bellower - prolonging dat PL boost?

löl

Hallöchen, I never though about this much but today I fought around a bit with Tekehu (Stormspeaker) and Aloth (Wizard, wearing Cap of the Laughingstock) and used Wall of Draining with Aloth while fighting off two Risen Soldiers. It prolonged the chants just fine. So I tested it out more and gave Tekehu a chant that was composed of a lot of different support phrases: they all got applied to Aloth (as expected) and stayed there with his Wall of Draining active. Which is quite hilrarious. I'm now thinking about a Bloodmage/Troubadour who uses Brisk Recication to scat a lot of different support phrases quickly while prolonging their effects with Wall of Draining. Main advantage would be that you wouldn't need to actively cast self buffs but just stack them passively while casting other stuff (like CC or damage). Sounds good or silly?

Ancient Brittle Bones skeletons from Beckoner are indeed of normal size (not the small ones).

It's a tankish nuker I would say. The beauty (or convenience) lies in the fact that you can deal weapon damage, cause dazed, heal (drain) and cast spells at the same time. You seldomly have to stop casting because of low health or because you get annoyed by melee attackers or so (I use Hands Of Light against interrupts). But maybe that feels less awesome in Turn Based Mode where timing/speed/recovery are handled very differently - I mean it's bad in TB anyway since Offensive Parry doesn't work well there (at all). Arcane Knight in general can be a rel. "hassle-free" combo. And works right from the start usually. More damage and (way) less tankyness you can get with a Sage, most notably Helwalker/Bloodmage. Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming in combination with Draining Touch/Club/Miasma does very powerful single target damage - and Spirit Lance with Stunning Surge (especially when using Instruments of Pain) is a very effective, spammable CC/damage combo. Spells gain +2 PEN from Thunderous Blows and +30% dmg from Helwalker's passive at 10 wounds. And all AoEs and durations enjoy the +10 INT from Turning Wheel. I believe it's the most recommended Wizard multiclass. Battlemage/Clear Out: what also works with Clear Out is Minor Blights in the main hand and a bashing shield or melee weapon in the offhand. Clear Out uses Minor Blights then. Can be a nice alternative if you run into enemies who are especially vulnerable to elemental dmg (or especially resistant to pierce and crush). Also Karabörü with Disciplined Strikes and Infuse with Vital Essence and Merciless Gaze can be real nice. The (bigger) AoE cone or Karabörü triggers fairly often then. Disciplined Strikes and Merciless Gaze don't stack their crit chances additively but still: you'll get a ~36% chance to convert all hits to crits which is decent. Maybe nice backup to Spirit Lance if your spell uses are depleted or so. What is also really nice is Keeper of the Flame with Clear Out. Sungrazer (with both AoE enchantments), too.

Steel Garrote/Bloodmage is very good if played with Whisopers of the Endless Paths and Offensive Parry (enchantment). oYou can reach very high deflection via Paladin passives and Wizard buffs which leads to a lot of misses in melee. Every miss will trigger Offensive Parry. Offensive Parry causes daze on hit which not only leads to severe underpenetration from enemies but also immediately unlocks the draining for Steel Garrote. Such an Arcane Knight can tank and dish out melee damage while healing and casting at the same time. The auto-healing part is good to counter Blood Sacrifice. It's also not correct that a Paladin can't enhance casting capabilities: he can raise ACC with Zealous Focus (although I think Exalted Endurance is better) but nore importantly he can add a 10% burning lash to all his damaging spells via Eternal Devotion which works with spells as well. Inspired Beacon can be used to increase some high-dmg spells like Piercing Burst for example. Such an Arcane Knight is hard to kill (since he's draining health while parrying) and can cast non-stop at the same time. With Inspired Beacon his parries also do significant damage. Here's a high-level Steel Garrote/Bloodmage: HOWEVER: While Offensive Parry is very good in RTwP mode it is bad in Turn Based mode. That's because in Turn Based mode there's only a very little chance to miss. And Offensive parry only triggers on misses. But you can play a Steel Garrote with other weapon setups - for example use the grimoire switching trick to keep Concehaut's Draining Touch for the whole fight and use it with a shield. It will drain health by itself but because it also weakens it will also unlock the Stell Garrote's draining: double drain and very high dmg. Even better if instead of a shield you use a club + modal which lowers Will by 25. That's because Draining Touch targets WIll and not Deflection. You can take Scion of Flame and Spirit of Decay and get +2 PEN for Flames of Devotion if used with Draining Touch and raise your ACC with FoD by 10 with Rig of Focused Flames. So if your club hits and lowers Will by 25, then you cast a Miasma and lower it further by 40 and then use Draining TOuch you attsck with the equivalent of +85 accuracy which leads to a lot of crits. You could also use Spirit Lance - but that's indeed better with a Battlemage, for example Devoted/Bloodmage or so. Mostly because of Clear Out + Spirit Lance.

Since there are no real elevations in the game (it's all flat and elevations are just optical illusions) it's a bit messed up. Try to cast any "line-AOE" spell like Mind Lance or Rolling Flame up a staircase or ramp.

You can just sneak past the looters with one companion and then go to Ilari and initiate dialogue. For only 40 copper the quest is resolved and the looters are friendly. There is no need to fight them because a) they are superhard and b) they don't give you anything special when you kill them. It may be cool to try as a challenge but I wouldn't come back to them just because of that.

Gallant's Focus gets suppressed by most other active accuracy boosts. It's not worth it in my opinion (unless you have no other source of ACC boost at all). You can charm one of the dragons with Munacra Arret and/or Spirit Spiral (the other one is immune iirc). Both give +10 ACC on Whisper of Treason. Ring of Changing Heart can dominate, but is has no ACC bonus. Charming one of two dragon helps immensely because most enemies will usually fight that dragon over you and you have a lot more time to do you stuff calmly while the charmed dragon gets butchered. Charmed dragon is the best summon.

Speaking about direction: Don't know if it helps other players, but I feel a lot more motivated if I not only discovered a cool synergy/build recipe but am also able to put it into some thematical perspective and have some sort of idea who this character really is (and was). Just steering a min-maxed robot through the game is not that much fun for me. So for example when I played my first Warlock (Berserker/Wizard) whom I wanted to equip with all the Rekvu gear and Grimore of Vaporous Wizardry (nuking myself with Combusting Wounds and all the other fire spells and also Slicken while tanking foes) I thought about "Why is this guy always injured with a Severe Burn and burns himself willingly all the time?". And when I had some sort of a coherent id and "story" it was a lot easier to pull through - even if the early game is often particularly bad if you are following some weird mechnical synergy that only comes online later in the game. I once even could finish a playthrough just because I saw that a certain gear/race/skin combination looked like a Draugr from Skyrim. So I decided to play a guy who believes that he's an undead vessel. It worked even though it was silly initially. I don't say that you should play that - just that some idea of "who is he?" does immensely help with direction so that you don't get lost in all the possibilities like "is this weapon better or that one?". Usually the generel idea about the char dictates which weapon is better - and I don't mean mechanically. Like that Draugr would have looked stupid with some pristine weapon like the Voulge. It had to be something more shabby or ancient looking. Like Dire Talon or Gladiator Sword + Bronlar's Phalanx or so. I once played a Huana Mataru (Unbroken/Trickster). He wore the Reckless Brigandine, Cadhu Sclath, Kapana Taga and White Witch Mask (looks super-hauana-ish). It was no question which items and abilites he needed. It was also no question which faction I followed and so on. Did the same with a female Mataru but SC Devoted with the same armor but "deserted" and sided with the RCD, killing the queen, taking her headgear, using Toughened Fury and Mob Stance and such. It just helps to not get lost in all the possibilities. It's like restricting yourself but for a good reason. Other ideas for another playthrough then (or a companion, sidekick or hireling). It is a Role Playing Game after all.

Nice

I tested them all yesterday night. The one Dawnstar is indeed hanging at 100% recovery all the time. I read before that Wael's Incarnate is bad (maybe because it's squishy and can't tank?) - but it has a high rate of fire with those shocking bolts. It's like a turret with popping eyes. But yeah: maybe less effective than a properly setup Essential Phantom (which doesn't drain you 5 PL and is PL4).

Konstanten and Fassina can hook up and it's pretty sweet (coming from somebody who usually groans and yawns when romances in games come up).

As I said I didn't dive into it. We can never know the figures unless somebody confirms them. In the end it doesn't really matter how many copies were sold. You could give away 500k copies for free and gain nothing. The game has to make money. And I think there's no doubt that it didn't perform well since that was indeed confirmed several times. As to the question "why?": even Josh and Obsidian are unsure why - with all the telemetry and tools they have. They can only speculate as we do. But maybe the console sales will lift it into realms where another sequel would make sense. Also because of game pass etc. Let's hope so.

We had reach weapons with higher engagement radius in the PoE beta. It was very messy. Enemies that walked up to your front line got engaged by the backline and suffered tons of disengagement attacks while trying to reach somebody in the frontline. Deadfire's Disengagement Attacks fire a bit more conservatively (e.g. not if you run parallel/closely around or towards the engager) so maybe it could work if the engagement radius is not significantly higher (like 2m or so would be too much already I assume).

Given that the Outer Worlds had an semi-exclusive Epic deal I guess it did very well financially. There are no Steam sales for it yet - that's still to come.

Check out this list in the wiki: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Pillars_of_Eternity_enchantments#Spell_enchantments It has all spell enchantments and more spell effects. Most useful for (Wannabe-Wizard Rogues with AoE spells) are in my opinion (the green ones come fairly early or can get rushed, the orange ones mid game) : Tlauntain's Staff (3 Fireball, Act 3) The Flames of Fair Rhian (3 Fireball, Endless Paths lvl 11, need to siphon knowledge from Maerwald's soul first) White Crest Armor (1 Dancing Bolts, 1 Overwhelming Wave, WM) Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer (1 Torrent of Flame, Act 1) The White Spire (3 Blizzards, mid Act 2) Ring of Searing Flames (3 Combusting Wounds, random loot) Animancer's Boots (3 Jolting Touch, end of Act 2) Sun-Touched Mail of Hyran Rath (3 Sunbeams, beginning of Act 2) Amulet of Summer Solstice (3 Sunbeams, mid Act 2) Rotfinger Gloves (3 Touch of Rot, 3 Spreading Plague, beginning of Act 2) Bittercut (3 Vile Thorns, 1 Infestation of Maggots, WM) Those all (except Combusting Wounds and Maggots) work with Deathblows. There are many more and I would swap items out if their per-rest uses are depleted (until nex rest). That way you can build up a pretty good arsenal of spells. You can duplicate an item with the Helwax Mold (for example Flames of Fair Rhian and then dual wield it for 6 Fireballs per rest). White Crest Armor + White Spire looks very nice together. Also check out Spell Striking and Spellchance items on that wiki site. For example Azureith's Stiletto (Act 1) and Bleak Fang (Act 3).

Hehe. Actually I do use summons - just not that one. The -5 PL and the alternative spells at that tier lead me to not taking this.

Useless when solo: mostly I guess since all melee will attack you anyway. In a party it can be very important.

I can't say anything: never used it.

You mean pike I guess, but yeah: I think that's correct. Although I had the feeling (but didn't investigate) that I could engage a but further with WotEP - which has a bit longer reach than the usual melee weapon (1.2m vs. 0.8m). But I never saw enhanced engagement capabilites with the "real" reach weapons like pike and quarterstaff (which have 1.8. range). Also you def. can't engage over several meters with Instruments of Pain. That would be so devastating...

I think it's more a matter of "DLC expands the main game" vs. "DLC is like a small sequel". For players like me who tend replay RPGs a lot the first one is actually nicer. For players who only finish the game once the second variant is a lot better. I believe players who prefer the second variant are the majority but I can't say for sure. PoE did increased the level cap with its DLCs (and introduced more talents and abilities), Deadfire did not. The latter is easier to do because you don't have to design and implement a whole lot of new abilities for the additional new (power) levels.

You made a typo and put a post in here that reads as if you wanted to tell me which games I should or shouldn't like. So I guess we are even.

I simply didn't use hard-CC invocations but damaging and debuffing ones (Shield Cracks, Fen Fidel's Neck and most notably White Worms which is ridiculous if you can cast it often - like a Skald with Offensive Parry who can generate phrases while casting his invocations). That way you can dish out damage non-stop while being tanky and gaining phrases passively from parries and singing. Of course that Skald is not about crowd control then.