Boeroer

1. There is. And there are invisibilties that do not break, see my post above. Mainly Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure (only breaks on direct damage) and Vanishing Strikes (never breaks while it's active). 2. Right, but you missed the important part: Brilliant restores spell uses every 6 seconds. So you can cast SoT over and over again which itself prolongs Brilliant (among all other benefical effects).

The trick is to become Brilliant (an inspiration which will give you new spell uses every 6 seconds) and combine it with Salvation of Time. You basically cast it over and over again until you have build up a very long duration of everything (including Brilliant itself). The hard part is to become Brilliant. You can do this by hitting yourself or getting hit while wearing the Shroud of the Phantasm, if you have a single class Cipher in the party (Ancestor's Memory) or if you have a special version of the Watcher ability (Wits of Death's Herald) which you need to unlock through conversation with the gods. The easiest way it to use a Cipher. There is (kind of) unlimited invisibility. You can gain unlimited invisibility on several routes. You can simply combine an ability that makes you invisible with either SoT+Brilliant or Wall of Draining: Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure: has nothing to do woith the actual Brilliant inspiration. It creates a long lasting invisibility that will not break if you are not casting direct damage spells (like e.g. Fireball) on enemies. So everything that only does CC will keep you invisible. ALso pure DoTs will not break it (e.g. Concelhaut's Corrosive Skin). Only direct damage. Funnily enough all Wall spells also don't break it, so you can prolong it endlessly via Wall of Draining and also use Wall of Many Colors etc. to deal assassination damage. Shadowing Beyond: the invisibility will break on all offensive actions, but it can be prolonged with Salvation of Time + Brilliant. However this isn't really useful for an Assassin 'cause it break easily. Smoke Veil: same Vanishing Strikes: the invisibility will not break at all until it runs out. If you prolong this with SoT+Brilliant you have an Assassin on god mode. Be aware that the SoT/Brilliant trick is extremely tedious to do. You can write an AI script that does the pre-buffing for you but it still takes a lot of time to reach a long duration. For me personally: boooring. But of course it's very good once it's set up. Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure + Draining Wall is more fun by far since it doesn't need a ton of pre-casting buit can be done during a normal encounter. Anyway: the way I play Assassins you don't need all that prolonging though. An Assassin usually is a very effective hit+run class: you sneak in, strike woith very high PEN and ACC, maybe strike a second time (goal is to kill at least one target or to apply Gouging Strike, maybe stacked with Bleeding Cuts or True Love's Kiss and Shadow Fang), vanish and repeat but leave combat with your last invisibility use. Repeat. You can do this solo or with a party waiting in the backround, ready to rush in if you fail. And it can be big fun like that (thinking about the original "Thief" game). Using a stealthy "strike with weapon from stealth/invisibility" Assassin in a normal "walz in and pummel everything to death" party setup doesn't make much sense. However, with stuff like Arkemy'r Brilliant Departure or Vanishing Strikes you can play an Assassin differently even without using the SoT-Brilliant trick. As you can imagine a Wizard/Assassin with Arkemy'r Br. Departure can stay invisible for a long time (virtually forever with Wall of Draining) and cast CC spells with +25 ACC. A SC Assassin with Vanishing Strikes can boost his INT and use items (+INT items, Strand of Favor), pet (Ooblit) and consumables (Mari Crudia, Roe, Meppu, ) which prolong benefical effects and during the fairly long period of invisibility attack all targets with Assassinate and Backstab. If you have a Priest with SoT even better, but you don't necessarily need to do the endless SoT+Brilliant loop to be effective. Also a Cipher with Ancestor's Memory can give you Brilliant so you can cast Vanishing Strikes over and over again. Bot both is not necessary for it to be effective and fun. The items and high INT should be good enough. I personally like to play an Assassin as the "scout" of the team that's somewhat build around that playstyle: sneak in, check enemies out, kill the most dangerous ones one by one and keep the party in the background until they can easily overwhelm the remaining enememies or if my Assassin screws up or if I simply don't want to sneak around anymore.

When talking about evil rewards in PoE (I think it was Gift from the Machine) Josh Sawyer once said something along the lines of: Like in real life doing the "right"* thing should be reward enough. Doing the "wrong" thing might get you material advantages, but it might also weigh on your mind - or in case of PoE/Deadfire: on your soul. And of course it's way more risky to fight a dragon - so the reward should be higher than if you simply talk your way out of a fight, shouldn't it? * in terms of benevolance

That is not correct. Sidekicks don't have personal quests but they do have banter. Some of them even can have rather deep interaction like for example Konstanten & Fassina whom you can watch engage in a relationship. In the DLCs you can't even tell the difference between official companion and sidekick if you bring certain ones - e.g. Fassina to FS, Konstanten to SSS or Ydwin to BoW. Serafen can basically be seen as non-faction if you treat him well.

Most summons I see as mere decoy for enemies à la "here, attack those guys while I beat you".

You picked the wrong summons. These here: "Called to His Bidding, the Ancient Instruments of Death" are actually quite good and the weapons scale with your level (unlike most other chanter summons).

You can play with two Fighters, why not? Does it have to be "sword" and shield or would something like rapier + small shield also be okay? Thinking about Old Vailian noble/aristocratic fencer. There is a nice Rapier in the Salty Mast in Defiance Bay (Sword of Daenysis - there, it's even called a sword ;)). Later you can couple it with Little Savior (small shield) which is always great to have in a party. You would be the nimble, fast duelist. Boots of speed, light(ish) armor (maybe Breastplate? Osric's Family Plate looks awesome with a fencer - pair it with Munacra Arret for great noble looks). You could then even take Enigma's Charm and play your fighter as some kind of charming flunky who not only fences but also manipulates people. Munacra Arret and Enigma's Charm + Disciplined Barrage is very effective. High INT would be good. Or war hammer instead of sword? Gruffy kind of fighter, like a sapper. Battle axe or mace would also work. I don't recall which culture start with war hammers, maces or battle axes though. Spear for a more tribal touch (as you said living lands). I mean - just to make it a bit different from Edér with his sabre.

For the speed calculations you can use this: https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/ With the frames you can then calculate the base dps of the weapons. Sword of Daenysis + March Steel Dagger: with Time Parasite and Durgan Steel you can wear plate armor and leave on Vulnerable Attack and still have 0 recovery - without Gauntlets of Swift Action.

Huh? How does the casting of Mirrored Image transfer the effects of Baubles of the Fin to enemies?

The difference is that casting times in Deadfire get influenced by attack speed modifiers and DEX - so you can shorten the casting time. In PoE only recovery was influenced and only with DEX could you shorten the casting animation. You have to compare Wizards to the other classes of Deadfire and not with Wizards of PoE. Deadfire is a whole different game. All characters share the new mechanics, that means enemies cast more slowly as well. For the new interrupt system to make any sense the casting times have to be longer. Else the player wouldn't really have a chance to use interrupts at all. So even if the Wizard in Deadfire has longer casting times: everyone else has that. But that doesn't mean that the Wizard is a weak class in the scope of the game. I also wouldn't tie the question whether Wizards are weaker or not to one single spell.

Bisschen in der Sprache vertan, wa?

That seems to be a little early. I mean if you go to WM right after starting Act II. If you did some Act-II-leveling it will be fine. I would recommend WM I around lvl 8. Story-wise it doesn't matter much when you do it, just don't push it too far to the end.

But... Konstanten *is* a skald, so what Kaylon said about non-offensive chants doesn't apply to Konstanten: I also think it doesn't apply to Bellower either since the invocations that profit from PL most are the offensive ones that deal damage.

Check out Spirit Lance + Mule Kick for laughs. Clear Out + Lance is quite jawdropping. Also Spellblade is nice. You can give him a rod + Blast, I'd recommend Watershaper's Focus, and then apply Deep Wounds, Arterial Strikes, Gouging Strikes and most notably Toxic Strikes in an AoE. Once Ondra's Wrath gets triggered it gets all the goodies from Rogue like Deep Wounds, Sneak Attack, Deathblows etc. That way you can apply rogue stuff in an AoE with rel. little Guile before (or after) you run out of wizard spell uses - which is nice in the early game (where spell uses are so scarce). Nannasin's Cobra Strike has high base damage and is very good with a Spellblade. Very powerful single target tool. Concelhaut's Draining Touch (do not learn it, use it from a grimoire and switch the grimoire after summoning in order to keep it for the whole fight) has the highest base damage of any one handed weapon afaik and targets Will instead of Deflection. It also weakens the enemy and drains health. Give Aloth a club + modal in the offhand, summon Draining Touch and switch grimoire, cast Miasma, then attack the debuffed enemy with Full Attacks like Crippling Strikes. He will have absurdly low Will and Draining Touch will nearly always crit, doing very high damage. So - Aloth can be great with all his possible multiclasses.

What bow was it? War or hunting bow? And some unique one or a "normal" one?

Yes, that's most likely the reason. The first time I played Chanter I couldn't find my skeletons anymore after upgrading. The upgrade changes the icon (sometimes drastically) and the name and the Power Level tier in which it is sorted into (I, II, III, IV and so on - on the action bar). Urdel and Gurdel, once upgraded, is named "for they to enjoy stomping your head" but the icon should be pretty similar and easy to find on the bar (just red instead of orange). Hel Hyraf turns into "the shield cracks" which has a broken blue shield on a green background (iirc). That's pretty different from the original Hel Hyraf icon at a glance. If you didn't even upgrade those on Konstantel then something is off though.

Yes. Also Faergus as Firgist, Josh Sawyer as Telfor and so on...

No idea where that is. Never used something like that.

If you take Bloodmage you will be fine. Recently there was a confirmed single class Bloodmage who sucessfully did the Ultimate Challenge for Deadfire (which is so much harder than with PoE). So: totally viable for normal solo game.

Correct. If theycan't engage you you can't break it. Doesn't prevent you from engaging them of course.

Cadhu Scalth with high Athletics or Bronlar's Phalanx do give you higher deflection than the Ward (every point of added deflection has increasing returns). But it will surely also work well with the Ward. Casita or (Gipon Prudensco) are the best to raise your deflection, right.

Entonia Signet doesn't care how many enemiey you engage. It's the other way round: It counts how many enemies do engage you. So if you fight enemies who don't have engagement (like tigers or so) it does nothing.

On the website the damage of Exceptional (+30%) is included because the blade comes exceptional. If you substract that you get the base damage.

If I'm not mistaken then WotEP's base damage is only 9-15 (average 12). A normal Great Sword has 18-24 (average 21). Let's add the lash to the base damage because it's multiplicative, too: WotEP: 14 vs. Great Sword 21. so WotEP has roughtly 67% of the damage output ot normal Great Swords. 130 vs. 150 doesn't seem right. If the great sword does 150 then WotEP should do around 100. I mean if I'm not having nasty brain farts atm... The overall dps will still be higher (as long as you are getting attacked in melee) because you get those awesome free attacks without any recovery from Offensive Parry (they also profit from Sneak Attack and all that). But an Unbroken without Shield and with WotEP will have lower deflection and reflex and also only gain 5 engagement slots max (Unbroken + Hold the Line + Persistnt Distraction + Reckless Brigandine + Blackened Palte Helmet: bad looking combo ) without Defender Stance. That's why I like WotEP better with non-Unbroken.

Most of the bugs that are now in place were introduced with patches (especially when introducing new features which is to be expected).