Boeroer

Attacks from stealth (and invisibility) - the attacks you make at the start of combat out of stealth mode (if you didn't get discovered). Not Sneak Attack (the rogue ability). It works with every class as long as you can't be seen when attacking (stealth/invisibility).

Shadowing Beyond et al. are upgrades of Escape. I would give the upgrades at least the same duration of the deflection bonus that Escape has and decouple it completely from the invisibility. "What they intended" - I guess they just screwed this up a bit.

Power Level means (among other useful things like increased ACC, duration and PEN) +5% base damage. That's multiplicative. It's the reason why low-level abilites like FoD or Crippling Strike stay great throughout the game and work very well with damage bonuses like Sneak Attack and high MIG and such. It also scales fists (and thus can be important to jump from +legendary to +mythic fists for example - which is a big deal). It also scales projectiles for stuff like missile spells and jumps of Mind Blades and Whispers of the Winf or Old Nary's Curse. Prestige is nearly always the best passive pick if you are using some damaging abilites. Especially if you can stack a few more PL bonuses on top of it to reach certain thresholds.

There are sorting options in the stash. Maybe you accidentially clicked one of them?

That is one single use case though. the higher the level/content the more narrower it becomes. But then: If you put the same skeletons but with exceptional weapons against the same soft casters the outcome would be the same. In fights against tough foes in the late(ish) game the skeletons are currently very weak. They will get massacred very quickly anyway (they do scale HP but not on the same scale as enemies' dmg output and PEN grow) - while they don't even scratch them anymore. They are only good as decoy then which is a bit sad. Still great with a SC Paladin and Divine Retribution of course or with Grave Calling (ot both) - but that's not the intended use I guess. It wouldn't hurt at all if they at least could scratch non-squishies a bit before getting crushed. Besides that I could make the argument that Ancient Weapons would also still be somewhat useful if they didn't scale their PEN etc. - if I put them against casters. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to take the scaling away from them. You also called for scaling weapons for wyrms. Still you could use them against casters to some effect... If scaling weapons is a good thing on some summons it should be good for all. Being systemic and coherent and all that... In my opinion it's not okay that they are really good offensively in the early game but only circumstancially useful later on - with Obsidian making sure that low level abilites stay relevant via Power Level on the other hand. They don't scale as well as other abilites do. And I think that was an issue that Obsidian wanted to avoid after PoE. In my opinion it's an oversight that the summons themselves do scale their values but not their weapons. Phantom is a very obvious case, but Skeletons are not right as well. Due to their numbers a normal weapon scaling would be too good, sure. That's why I said their weapon scaling should be somewhat slower or limited. Lvl-20 guy summoning skeletons with exceptional swords doesn't sound too much - but maybe it's too good indeed. So poor - normal - fine could be it. No idea. One would have to test that. A viable ability (for your character) should stay viable throughout the whole game. That's what PL and scaling is supposed to do - but it fails with most summons.

I just reread the description of Voidward and it sounds as if the ring was build to protect against the raw lash of Voidward and not the self damage. I mean lore-wise. So at least it's not as weird as I thought.

So what would happen if you set "max summon to its limit" to two with Essential Phantom?

I don't quite understand... So let's say Essential Phantom has its own variable that determines that it replaces every other summon (of the same "category")? Or how is that done per ability?

Remarkable how something like "Why do I not get dragon bits if I convince the dragon?" turns into a hot take about human behaviour during the corona crisis.

Thinking more about it: Conjurer benefits the least from his PL boost because summons and summoned weapons only scale their duration with PL, not their stats. So maybe my second idea was better: allowing two wizard summons instead of only one would be a very interesting thing to have. It's not as powerful as Beckoner was in the early days because you'd still need two castings (two spell uses, two times investing casting time etc.). Does anybody know if that's an easy thing to mod? I mean the general summons limit in the first place? And then maybe only make an exception to wizard summons (else we'd have a Conjurer/Beckoner with 24 sekeletons etc.)? Maybe you can give a certain value to each conjurer summon so that it is allowed as a second summon? No idea...

That is correct. And I was one of the first to point out that Deadfire's descriptions are nearly as vague and obscure as those of PoE. But this is deflecting because it has nothing to do with the problem of the OP who could play the game fairly well even with the crappy desriptions but suddenly hit a wall in the DLCs and only then complained about the difficulty.

The game was balanced around normal difficulty. And all things concerned it is a very well balanced game - superior in that regard to most other RPGs. Now - "normal" players who start into the game will become better, more accustomed to the mechanics, more experienced and will have a lot more things at their disposal towards the end of the game. So naturally you have to make the late game content significantly harder (even in the scope of one difficulty tier and harder than the character level suggests) than the early game - which starts of with easy fights and have the character of a tutorial (besides the obvious "shockers" like Gorecci Street which are supposed to show you that this ride will not always be so easy as the fight against single boars at the beach). Unsurprisingly most players seem to have no severe problems with the increased diffuculty of the DLCs. It is to be expected that: a) late game DLCs are more difficult than the content before and b) players who came that far are more experienced than when they started the game - that should be the case for all difficulty tiers. So in order to somewhat balance the game for most players you have to take those things into account. You can't balance it perfectly for all players. Difficulty tiers allow all sorts of players of differnt skill level (concerning RPG mechanics) to enjoy the game. BUT: they also allow you to enjoy the content you are suddenly not good enough for (or all of a sudden you are too good for . maybe because you suddenly understtod some profound mechanics better). Because you can switch to a different difficulty setting during the game. So if you feel an encounter is too hard for you and you become frustrated: you can easily tune down the difficulty for that encounter. That's more reasonable than ranting about it while countless others seem to have no problem with it. The problem is not the balance of the difficulty tier or the balance of the whole game - it is the ego of the player who can't accept that she/he has to turn down the difficulty in order to be able to progress - his/her inability to cope with frustration, too. So the answer to the question "How can they can satisfy both ends of that spectrum?" is definetely "with different difficulty settings". Because you can not only start at different difficulties - you can also switch during a playthrough. What on earth could Obsidian offer you in addition to make the game approachable for individual players? Make a deep survey and an IQ test before you start and then procedurally alter the difficulty while you advance through the game? Sounds cool - but maybe the easier solution would be to put a reasonable amount of resources into balancing the game fairly well and then trust that the majority of players will not lose their sh!t while playing it.

Don't even know if you need a shield. Remember that medium and large shields will have an impact on your accuracy - including spells. And Wizards are not the masters of Accuracy to begin with. Small shield would be ok I guess. Especially once you have Little Savior (that's a difficult task to begin with though ;)). Also Alia Braccia is a very good shield for you if you use is against Lagufaeth. They can end your run pretty easily with those paralysing blowdarts. Bit equipped with Alia Braccia all grazes turn into misses (that itself is incredible) and then reflect them back and paralyzes them instead - which makes Lagufaeth encounters a ton easier.

That is not entirely correct. In most instances it also affects the composition of encounters (more/less enemies and different enemies). So the goal IS to give every player a somewhat balanced experience. You can't please everyone though - and you shouldn't try. Somebody who can rush through the main game but gets completely stuck in one of the DLCs clearly is a very rare specimen of player. You can't balance a game for those players and not screw it for the others who usually improve while playing the game for some time until they reach the DLC areas - so usually you are more experiences once the late game begins.

Conjurer: biggest problem with the Familiar is that it can't be used if you want to conjure other summons. It gets replaced. What's a Conjurer who can either have a familiar or another summon? A dilettant? Solution would be to make the familiar independent from the summoning limit (see Many Lives Pass By phrase of Chanter). Or to give the Conjurer the ability to have two wizard summons at the same time (familiar + phantom or even two phantoms). I'd prefer the first one. Antipathetic Field: too good then. Would need dmg tuned down.

The skeletons are good as temporary blockers because they have engagement and you can steer them. But they do almost nil damage after some levels because poor swords have such low PEN that they underpenetrate nearly everything with -3 and the general damage they do ist already pretty low. I wouldn't want to see them swinging legendary swords, but something like exceptional in the later levels would be totally ok. Poor swords just don't cut it, höhöhö. So... is it possible to apply a "slower" scaling pattern? Also: Aspect of Galawain - my goodness is it bad offensively (besides the looks and that you can cast Wild Growth on it). It's fangs/claws/whatever need scaling very badly. And if it's already in place: better scaling or better weapons to start with.

I would pick the companions in the order you find them. Usually that's Aloth, Edér, Durance, Kana and Sagani. I usually hire a rogue adventuerer for the lockpicking and traps/secrets until I have assembled a full party of companions. You can (and should) deactivate auto-leveling of companions in the game options. Then you can level them up yourself - but lvl 1 is fixed.

Not so much because he has no particular dmg bonuses which would help to overcome DR (the enemy of light weapons) and also already has Alacrity which makes it easier to reach 0 recovery without speed weapons. Summoned weapons are best for a wizard. Concelhaut's Staff early one (enormous base dmg and comes exceptional) and later Spirit Lance (same big base damage, superb and has speed - and the AoE effect). Freezing Rake is a pretty strong spell, too.

Um... this may be a hot take but: with the difficulty settings?

Bleeding Cuts is worth it in terms of damage, but your reactivity suffers a lot. I also only use it if I can circumvent the recovery malus (e.g. with Ripostes or Barbaric Retaliation or Full Attacks and so on).

I didn't use Voidwheel much so no idea what you experience. However the ring works perfectly well with a Forbidden Fist (who deals self damage with his curse), Alacrity and also Sacred Immolation and Hylea's Talons. However, the ring was specifically designed to counter the damage of Voidwheel. Would be weird if it didn't work. Maybe it has something to do with the Assassin's increased "damage taken".

It's 10% every 3 secs and it stacks with itself. The recovery malus is not important if you attack from stealth because attacks from stealth have a 85% reduced recovery. So you can immediately act afterwards and vanish. Usually the Bleeding Cut will kill the enemy while you are hiding. Anotehr trick is to use a Battle Axe in the main hand and something else in the offhand and do a Full Attack. The recovery of the main hand will then get skipped by the Full Attack.

It reduces all raw dmg you receive by 25%. So the latter basically. Although the calculation is a bit different (as with all dmg reductions- it's going through double inversion) so effectively it's more than 25%. It's one of my favorite weapons, but not my favorite for an Assassin. By the way: the Assassin/Bleak Walker with a great sword has the additional benefit that the Ring of Focused Flames, when used with FoD, can counter the ACC malus of the Great Sword modal. That way you can squeeze in 30% more damage without having a huge drop in ACC. Still arquebus at point blank is the best assassination weapon unfortunately. Works very well from the early game on (due to the very useful modal).

Unfortunately you are wrong in this case. Critical damage bonus is an additive damage bonus like the ones from Two Handed Style, MIG over 10, fine/exceptional/super/legendary quality, overpenetration and so on. It has been like that since PoE even. In PoE it was 50% of weapon base damage, in Deadfire it's only 25% (but often gets stacked with overpenetration because crits do 1*5 times PEN for +55% damage then). The only multiplicative damage bonuses (aka "all damage times x%") are lashes of all kind and the 5% per Power Level for all damaging abilities. I could make some tests and screen them for you or post the code - but I think you can also see this when you look up the detailed dmg calculation in the combat log (use shift on the attack roll). If it doesn't contain any maluses (like from underpenetration - they mess up the calculation a bit) you can calculate the displayed dmg mods yourself and see that I'm right.

I'll leave it here then...