Boeroer

Not really. You can do it like that, but there's no rule that says that you can't have important quests in a town or village and that it can't be a hub that you'll return to frequently. Example: Stalwart. That village seems to be liked best by most players who played PoE + expansions. I don't have numbers obviously, but if you read about complaints about settlements in PoE you only read about Defiance Bay and Twin Elms. Dyrford, Stalwart etc. are rarely mentioned, if ever. Now you could say that's because the players "forgot that they ever existed" - but at least Stalwart is so integral to the whole WM expansions that I don't think that's the case.

I usually don't get refunds. I made the (usually informed) decision to buy that game - and as long as it's not broken or something I think that it's my problem if I don't like it. Usually it's not the quality of a game (reviews help here not to buy badly done stuff) but it's simply my taste that wasn't met. I understand that players who don't have much to spare will get refunds though. I would have done it as a student, too. Money was so scarce then. That's no longer the case. So - one could say that instead of wasting time I now waste money. But I don't feel that way. That's why stuff like Pathfinder, D:OS and D:OS2, Wasteland2 and lots of other titles sit in my Steam library with me barely looking at them, let alone playing them. Wait - now that I think about it: can't one give away games on Steam or something? Or lend them for free? Wasn't that a thing?

Something that also plays a role (when it comes to perceived strength) is how fun a character is to play. And it's no fun to watch your party whittle down an enemy very slowly - even if your dudes are sturdy as hell and can't really lose. Once you've determined that your party can reliably win a fight the qualifier for "stronger" shifts from "who can win this?" to: "who can win this faster"?

I'm too old for that. If it doesn't make me happy after a few hours it has to go. Same with books. I used to finish every book I started even if I didn't like it. Not anymore. If it stinks it gets thrown out immediately. No time for meh.

@Gromnir: I agree. I also agree to @thelee's point: it may be hard to find the gems between all the Hühnerscheiße, especially once the board becomes a more crowded place (like after beta release and such) and nusiances like firkraag888/master guardian/no1fanboy/whatever_name emerge from their moms' basements. But I also think (without wanting to sound too pompous) that devs should at least read what forum regulars of solid repute, knowledge and reasoning have to say about the game. Even if the forum is drowning it shouldn't be too hard to keep track of people like that. Not that their opinion is more important than that of the others per se, but the chances are a lot higher that you don't have to read a lot of ranting and drivel if you're concentrating on those. It is quite easy to get the devs' attention if you befriend them on other platforms like Discord, Twitter etc. Even Josh, although a busy man, will answer most questions regarding Obsidian stuff pretty quickly. It's just weird that one has to poke devs on Twitter and tell them to look into their own forums.

You misunderstood me. Maybe I didn't express myself well. I didn't mean that the forum got friendlier because Josh left. I didn't want to imply such causal connection. I only meant that 1. Josh left because the forum got nasty. 2. Then the forum got nicer (for reasons unknown to me) but 3. Josh wasn't coming back. Sorry if I was unclear.

Don't know how it's handeled in Deadfire, but in PoE dual wielding (carrying two weapons) didn't actually have a status effect. It was two handed and single handed usage that got a malus. So maybe it's the same in Deadfire and instead of looking for a bonus you should be looking for a malus...? But anyway: if you can find the entry for Two Weapon Style which somwhow hooks onto dual wielding it should be easier to see which conditions must be met so that this ability is used for attack speed calculations when dual wielding. You could then maybe simply copy Two Weapon Style, name it something like "Two Weapon Malus" and instead of +15% attack speed it does -10 accuracy or something. Then you automatically add it to every character as a invisible passive. Shouldn't that work?

Yeah... but when does the average player get those items? Also in a whole party you rarely need Brilliant. If it comes easy (like with Ancestor's Memory): great! But if you have to taylor your whole party and equipment for it: not worth it in a lot of cases in my opinion. If you're going with a cipher, wizard and priest anyway and like immunity to flanked then it's great synergy of course. Really good solo though - even with the unavoidable malus to PEN and ACC. When using summons you can even prevent that.

Blood Mage is already OP if you only cast Corrosive Siphon + Blood Sacrifice nonstop and nothing else. Just put it into the AI as an endless loop and you're good. Tactician: I don't agree 100%. It's way easier to exploit its strengths the less party members you have. It's a supergood choice for solo or duo runs and becomes more tedious and fiddly once you add more guys. Streetfighter is only OP because of Powder Burns. If that didn't cause Distracted (or all PER-afflictions wouldn't contain Flanked) that subclass would be reasonably well balanced. With blunderbusses it's just too easy to stay "flanked" all the time without actually suffering from it (meaning getting slapped in the face, ears and neck). Troubadour is OP because you have to do nothing to make it better than any other chanter. Some other subclasses are OP because you can easily circumvent their cons - but Troubadour is just better right from the shelf. If you have no clue what you're doing in Deadfire: grab a Troubadour. Same with Trickster I would argue.

Yes, but still no Ghost Heart. It has its merits, but I think it's overrated. But to be fair this also has a lot to do with micromanagement. If you tend to micromanage a lot anyway (like I do - I don't use AI at all) you won't find it hard to handle the AC. If you let it run on AI you will have a lot more problems. So how often you use pause might influence your perception of "Ghost Heart AC vs. normal AC" immensely.

MC Rangers should use all their Bond for stuff like Takedown Combo is my take. Anyway: I didn't say that Ghost Heart is bad. It is not. It's well balanced in my opinion and more importantly: it's not boring but brings something different to the class which is nice. But still I would't call it a general "strong package". I would consider to give this tag to other subclasses which are blatantly stronger compared to the base class - like Troubadour for example.

You can play solo no problem. The things you will miss: companion quests (nothing too important) and party banter (sometimes quite entertaining).

I just love Takedown Combo to pieces - especially with DoTs. Do you know what works similar but with ACC? Lion's Sprint. You can cast multiple Disintegrates with +15 ACC as long as it's up. Pure DoTs don't count as "attacks" that remove the bonus but still get the +15 ACC. Too bad that Ranger/Barbarian doesn't have any DoT-only ability.

Indeed. Max MIG, CON, PER and INT Fire Godlike with Veteran's Recovery, Shod-in-Faith, Fulvano's Amulet and 12 survival for the healing bonus and all that. A Ring of Focused Flames + Vulnerable Attack + getting bloodied. Cast Combusting Wounds on the guys. Once Blooded kicked in: Heart of Fury. Remainder got killed by Battle Forged + Blood Thirst. It worked ok but I had to drink quite a lot of Infuse wVE potions. What killed me at lvl 16 in some unimportant fight in Noonfrost was a bug with Battle Forged + Second Wind (Athletics): if you use Second Wind while Battle Forged is active you will hit yourself with the fire retaliation. I was low on endurance and forgot about it - and Battle Forged dmg is preeetty high at lvl 16...

Soul spams!

Yes, one corpse (the one you target) for one (big) explosion. Other corpses don't matter at that moment. In PoE it was a smaller and less damaging explosion for each and every corpse in the cone.

No, you have to hover over (and then click on) a corpse and only then you will see an AoE indicator with the corpse as center. Everything in that AoE will get that crush damage when said corpse explodes. The corpse then gets removed and you can cast it on another one. It works completely differently compared to PoE where you had a cone and every corpse in that clone would explode. Maybe you didn't click on a corpse and the game fails to properly react to that (like not allowing the cast then).

Ouch! Gute Besserung!

@Wormerine: is your signature image really broken or is that some insider joke?

If you can't find out why you are having sleep disturbances you might want to try vitamine B6. It's hard to overdose (>50mg a day) and a deficit can sometimes cause insomnia. Maybe worth a try. Some random B-vitamine-complexes (B6+B9+B12) are quite cheap. A deficit is unlikely if you eat normally, but still... maybe better to try something out than rolling around the whole night. If your sleep is disturbed because you lost all your money with poor horse-racing bets than it won't help though.

By the way: I think your White Worms didn't work because you need a successful hit roll against the corpse (which is hidden). @thelee pointed that out. You simply missed the corpse I guess. This is a fairly recent change (I mean not long before v. 5) and totally stupid. I also think it's unintended. Using Skeletons is smart, but remember that their weapons don't scale (always poor swords) so you might want to change to some other summons later.

Dude... 4-hour streams?

Ok, solo is a different thing of course.

Often 2d10 is used for rolling stuff on a percentage basis. So you don't add the two dices but read them as a number. 01 is 1%, 10 is 10% up tp 99 = 99%. 00 can be seen as 100%. Or simply view them as number from 1 to 100 without the percentage. So with two d10 you can actually make one d100 if you will. D100 would be awful to produce I guess... Maybe the two d10 are used in the sme way when rolling for initiative? Makes more sense than just adding two d10 results. Because the results would be more granular and that's what you want when rolling INI I guess (so there's less collision when two guys roll the same INI).

You are looking at it in the wrong way. Actually retraining your wizard lets you gain a lot more spells than before. And it only costs you money. Here's how you do it: lean all spells from grimoires which you didn't already learn. This will cost some bucks. If you already did that: even bettere. Now you take some random grimoires and write all the spells you have learned into those. I guess you missed that this is possible? You can simply write your learned spells into any grimoire you find (replacing the original spells in it). Unique spells (like Ninagauth's Shadowflame and such) that you learned from unique grimoires don't need to be written down - you'll never forget them. Ok, now you have written down you current learned spells into some grimoires. Hit retrain. Hush! Don't level up! First learn all the spell you wrote into your books gain - that might be a bit expensive, but trust me: it's worth it. Now level up! You will only be presented with the spells you don't already know. That way you will waste nothing. You'll have a way bigger spell portfolio after retraining. Which makes your wizarda lot more flexible. You can learn every spell in the game (besides the uique ones you must find) with a few retrains (if you wish to do so). You will have payed for it only with money. It's totally worth the time and dime.