Boeroer

I play on Linux and my last crash was... well I can't remember.

Persistent Distraction applies Distracted which is a regular affliction: Steel Garotte draining works. Paladin passives + Trickster buffs + Riposte makes a lot of sense. Note that Riposte will also drain life for you once the enemy who gets hit by Riposte is afflicted by something. Riposte is an invisible Full Attack that has 0 attack time and 0 recovery. It always works - doesn't matter if you are currently casting or recovering or whatever. Draining effects do NOT profit from any healing buff (not MIG, not Practiced Healer - nothing) because it already scales with the damage you are dealing (more dmg = more healing). Steel Garotte draining stacks with other sources of draining (e.g. draining weapon and Blood Ward from Furyshaper and Chant...) Stats: sounds right. A superb weapon for such a class combo is Whispers of the Endless Paths - because its Offensive Parry (just like Riposte) drains health from enemies and procs on 100% of misses. It stacks with Riposte. But you'll lack the engagement slots of spear and shield (and have lower deflection although it comes with a melee deflection buff). You could get more slots with Reckless Brigandine and helmet of the Blackened Plate etc. - but that will look rather funny. For spears there's a nice backup-spear that deals slash/pierce damage instead of only pierce. Besides that I guess Stalker's Patience is the way to go. The best large shield imo is Cadhu Scalth (with high althletics/metaphysics). Its damage reduction stacks with the ones from underpenetration (and Death's Maw with its Death Runes). Akola's Apex Ward has its own retaliation effect but it's rather weak. Bronlar's Phalanx has the highest potential for deflection (scales with lost health).

Citzal's Spirit Lance is a pike. Only the initial hit applies the modal effect (not the AoE). Cobra Strike has no weapon proficiency. Same as Kalakoth's Minor Blights and Concelhaut's Draining Touch. C's Parasitic Staff is indeed a quarterstaff. Citzal's Enchanted Armoury are a one-handed Great Sword and a one-handed Morning Star. Reaping Knives: don't actually know. I guess daggers or none...

Check out "Kapana Taga" - it's the best club in the game. But the very first unique eone you can buy ("Shattered Vengeance") is also not bad. However - every club lowers Will by 25 points with the modal, so it doesn't really matter which one as long as you can hit with it. There are a few spells that lower Will but target another defense. For example Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage targets Fortitude and lowers both Fortitude (-10 points) and Will (-10 points). Also Barbs of Condemnation (Priest, lowers all defenses by 10, targets Fortitude). Don't know which else from the top of my head.

Debuff Will with either a spell (for example Miasma of Dull-Mindedness lowers Will by 40 points), apply an Intellect-affliction (Confused/Charmed/Dominated: -10 Will points - for example Cipher's mind controls) and/or a Resolve-affliction (Shaken/Frightened/Terrified: -10 Will points - for example Barbarian's yells) and/or with weapons (all clubs with activated modal: -25 points; Willbreaker Morning Star: -3 per hit). Best is to first hit them with a club and then cast Miasma, followed by a fear effect (like Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage and such). There shouldn't be much Will left after that. "I hit him with a club: he left no will after that..."

Sure-Handed Ila is particularly good with reloading weapons (guns and crossbows/arbalests). Because the -20% recovery and -20% reload bonus both get applied to those weapons. Add stuff like Acina's Tricorn and Maia's armor and you can reload pretty quickly. The other chant you might want to have is Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr (gives your party's weapons and also your summons a burning lash). As Chanter subclass you have different options: Beckoner for the double wyrms (they do quite some nice ranged damage) and later double Ancient Weapons etc. Or Troubadour because you might want to stack Sure-Handed Ila and Mith Fyr without a gap. I think I would pick Troubadour. He ca also run just one chant (like Sure Handed Ila) with Brisk Recitation and then dish out summons and other invocations like crazy. You can go Arcane Archer and raise Arcana and then pick Spearcaster. It also profits from Arcana. You could take some other subclass and aim for Dragon's Dowry which has the highest damage per shot in the game. Both work very well with the Ranger's Takedown Combo (+100% dmg for the next attack). Red Hand is also always a great option. When using blunderbusses maybe Sharpshooter is good because of the +1 PEN (blunderbusses tend to have a bit low PEN). Another nice weapon is Watershaper's Focus: with Blast modal the recovery will be lengthy, but the chant and gear can counter that somehow and the build-in jum stacks with Driving Flight, making proccing Ondra's Wrath enchantment rel. reliable. Because ofthe two jumps this is also a great weapon for Arcane Archers (since their imbue shots will trigger their spell on every jump which is quite hilarious with something like Pull of Eora and Binding Web). I wouldn't pick Ghost Heart though because your summoned Animal Companion can't be on the same battlefield with your other (chanter's) summons. A Wildryhmer with Dragon's Dowry/Spearcaster/Red Hand/Watershaper's Focus, Sure Handed Ila, Mith Fyr and a pack of Wyrms is pretty devastating at range.

Both: initial hit and also blast.

Taste of the Hunt with Citzal's Spirit Lance is pretty nice. Only heals once but applies the DoT to all hits.

Well - us Germans say "ach".

Ach when I think about it: who am I to judge. I have a sense of direction like a headless chicken at best (my wife always makes fun of me), so...

Yes, it's a charged item like some others and not a real grimoire. You can use it in some tough boss battle or something and then sell it. The special thing is that it goes into the pet slot which normally is only cosmetic (besides Concelhaut's Skull). I can't remember if Essential Phantoms (Wizard spell) can use items from the pet slot. If so the phantom you summon could use the spells every time without discharging them because phantoms get clones of your items and not the actual items.

It's good that you made a detailed list. The only problem is that it's not Obsidian who did the port. That list should go to Versus Evil (I don't know which company they enlisted to do the port). I doubt that anybody from Obsidian will take this list and forward it to them - since they don't support Deadfire with patches etc. anymore. I doubt they are even reading the technical support forum atm. Maybe they do though, but my experience suggests otherwise...

Yeas. To be a bit more precise: BUT I agree that this should have been made more clear. Even if you read the corresponding scripted scene you might easily miss what's actually going on and what exactly he did.

I can only imagine the feeling of that punch in the gut: Divinity:OS sells well --> PoE sells well --> Divinity:OS II sells like hot cakes --> Josh expects the same for Deadfire --> Deadfire tanks (despite good critics). I mean that sure does hurt. It's like when I was young and doing websites for clients in my freetime and I would always include four designs: three that I really worked on and which i liked and a forth that was just trash cobbled together. And every time clients said: "Oh we like the forth one best!" Ouch...

Thanks. Too bad it got turned from an automatic ability (see Priest's Holy Radiance) into a normal spell where it has to compete with much better alternatives. Same with Grimoire Strike (which wasn't so good to begn with even as an encounter-based ability).

Why should Assassin/Ascendant be specifially broken? Because of the bit higher damage from stealth? You'll get your first fill of focus quickly but honestly you can do so with a lot of class combos as long as you pick an AoE weapon like mortars or a rod (keep in mind first recovery from stealth atttacks has a 80% bonus). In my opinion Helwalker or Berserker are even more powerful in combination with an Ascendant once you reach PL 7. Because once you are ascendend you want a) the ascension to last as long as possible and b) you want to cast as fast as possible. Ascendant/Streetfighter with blunderbuss (Kitchen Stove or mortars) is also right in that alley. A combo that I really like with Cipher is Forbidden Fist. Even if the Forbidden Fist ability doesn't generate focus it enfeebles the enemy which makes Disintegrate last 50% longer. Combine with sky-high INT from Duality of Mortal Presence and then Body Blows, Enervating Blows and Stunning Surge and you can also crit with your Disintegrat easily, adding another 50% duration. Even on bosses with stellar Resolve you can first cast Psychovampiric Shield to take away 10 RES. It is a very useful combo for the late game. Ascendant works nicely as well but I prefer Beguiler. Best thing is that charmed enemies don't flip back if you hit them with Disintegrate. If you also have a Ranger in the party (Takedown Combo) the Disintegrate damage will also get +100% bonus (Takedown Combo will not get removed by Disintegrate sice there's no damagig hit roll - yet it will profit with every tick). While we are at Assassin and late-game powerplay: A funny and powerful combo with Assassin is Bloodmage + Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure. CC spells as well as all "Wall" spells don't remove the invisibility from that spell. Also spells that apply a "pure" DoT effect without initial damage (Concelhaupt's Corrosive Siphon, Corrosive Skin, NOT Necrotic Lance) will not remove it. At least they didn't in the past... You get +PEN and +ACC with all spells that don't do damaging hit rolls and stuff like Wall of Many Colors without becoming visible. It's like cheat mode. You can also skip Assassin and use Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure with Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon & Skin (you won't become visible either while upholding invisibility with Wall of Draining, healing from Blood Sacrifice with Corrosive Siphon, killing with Corrosive Skin). Enemies be like "Huh? Why is Rudy melting like wax? And Gustav and Klaus, too? Ahhh!"

And here silly me really thought for a minute that from there on people who got lost in a game with emphasis on exploration could find their way by themselves...

Scrolls work exactly like spells. Most of them don't work with Marksman. However, some spells are an exception and work like ranged weapons (mechanically) - I believe most Missile spells and stuff that gets cast "in a line" (like Rolling Flame) might work.

Step outside the Temple of Gaun and follow the green line, take the stair then:

The Marksman bonus only applies to targets that are >4m away. Since the character sheet can't determine this circumstancial bonus it won't show a raised ACC value for your ranged weapon when you casually look up your character's stats. It would have been cool if it showed the bonus anyway but maybe greyed out or somethng. Deadfire (sequel to PoE) does this but unfortunately PoE doesn't. You can see the difference in the combat log though: if you attack an enemy from far away (>4 meters) your accuracy value used for the attack roll should be 5 points higher. If you attack from point blank it should not be. It works with ALL ranged weapons (not all spells though - but a few). So you didn't pick something bad. 4 meters isn't very far, so usually if you are a ranged character you'll get the bonus most of the time unless enemies you want to attacks come pretty close.

That would be very helpful indeed. I still use pen & paper. Not very comfortable once you try to play the game on console I guess.

I never encountered this bug in nearly 3K hours of Deadfire. So it's really not very common. But it happens often enough that you can read about it every now an then in the forum.

The whole game is caused by development!

Is it? The new mechanic allows you to not pick any spell at level up but only take passives and/or foreign abilities (in case of multiclass) but with the right collection of grimoires still have a tremendously broad spell portfolio to cast from. The only downside is that you have to switch more often since you can't put all your favs into one grimoire. Priests and Druids don't have this very advantageous mechanic (especially powergamey for multiclass wizards) and yet you don't complain about those two but about grimoires. If grimoires were also customizeable this already borderline broken mechanic would become absurdly overpowered. Why pick a spell in the first place? You'd learn spells, write your favorite 2 or 3 grimoires, then retrain and pick no spells at all - while your perfectly composited grimoires would hold them all.