Boeroer

I guess lowish sales numbers motivated them to think about a way to rekindle sales. That - and the fact that there always was a Turn Based mode in the making since PoE - but never was released. So they didn't have to start from scratch.

No, we don't overlevel. We just realize that -25 Fortitude via Body Blows (which targets Deflection) might be very handy against a foe who's vulnerable to crush damage, has lower Deflection and high Fortitude. Thus we will switch to a Morning Star as soon as we realized that. I beat Neriscyrlas the first time I played BoW with a party on PotD at lvl 15 (since the recommended lvl was 15+ for BoW) - without any meta knowledge- simply by looking at her stats and choosing a Morning Star, Combusting Wounds and a Wall of Flame. I had the help of all three NPCs (Waidwen, Inquisitor, King of Ukaizo). It was over very quickly. No metagaming involved. But even if you fail on the first try: you already have meta knowledge after the first reload. So what's the deal with meta knowledge. If you are not playing Trial of Iron there's no problem in failing a few times to build up some more metaknowledge about the dragon. Nobody said that PEN/AR is an interesting or good mechanic. Most of us don't like it since it has too much impact and everything evolves around stacking PEN and AR, especially on PotD. But that has not much to do with the claim that Neriscyrlas is impossible to beat (she doesn't even have that high AR in the first place - for a boss) and PEN/AR especially has nothing to do with the way complaints are brought forth. The problem a lot of players have is that she casts Llengrath's Safeguard at some point. And once that's active she will gain +5 AR on top of her highish AR as soon as she drops below 50% endurance. But you can interrupt that spell rel. easily (3 sec cast) IF you are looking out for what Neriscyrlas is doing and NOT spamming abilities on him without looking. Then his AR is totally manageable (especially if you use fire abilites). OR you use raw damage (Death Ray, Disintegrate and so on). Thare are plenty of ways to deal with that. I can understand if people complain about Megabosses being just a huge pile of AR, defenses and health - but Neriscyrlas? Nah... Claiming that Saru Sichr is vendor trash is a bold move. It simply shows that you didn't understand what that weapon does. Its DoT "Poison Dipped" plus upgrades that has secondary effects on tick stack with every hit. So this weapon is actually perfect against boss enemies with high Fortitude. A tick every 12 secs - doesn't sound too good. But once you hit the enemy 10 times you have 10 parallel ticks and things start to become interesting (maybe that Neriscyrlas is immune to poison/disiease though so in that case the DoT will not work). Now you could say "How am I suposed to know this?" and you are right. But when I'm not 100% sure about something I would'nt make such strong and absolute statements. The Willbreaker is not late game equipment. Doing the Crookspur slavers is mid level content. And even IF you don't have both you can still us a normal Morning Star to apply Body Blows - which is the whole point of using a Morning Star in this case. Lower the defenses so that you can land other, more damaging abilites. Club lowers Will by 25. Which makes landing Misama more likely (especially if empowered) which will lower it 40 points further. If you don't see how this can be of use you didn't understand the game mechanics at all. And if you want to tell me that you tried BoW's endboss at lvl 10 (although the recommended level is way higher) - then went to a forum to rant how it's too difficult for you because of high AR (while PEN increases with Power Level which kind of relates to char level) then I can just

Read my last post (before this one).

Which Estoc? Blade of the Endless Paths Drake's Bell The White Spire Grey Sleeper They are all pretty decent in their own ways. But as soon as you meet pierce immune foes (like Flame Blights) you can't use them. Which weapons did you use so far?

A Beguiler is basically a cipher who can cast without generating focus with weapons. Since his Deception powers generate a lot of focus with Draining Whip AND powers cast from stealth count as sneak attacks he can start an encounter with Phantom Foes or Eyestrike or Secret Horrors and fill up his focus right away. Then just keep on casting whatever powers (shred for example) and refill focus with an occasional deception spell. Preferably one that helps you land the next shred spells. A Psion is also able to be played like a pure caster - but I hate that his focus generation stops when he gets even grazed. Beguiler is kind of the better Psion in my opinion. A single class Beguiler gets access to all the nice passives in the cipher ability tree - that seem to have been made with Beguiler in mind. Shared Nightmare + Amplified Wave after casting Phantom Foes + Complete Self + Soul's Echo + Empty Soul is just awesome. Huge AoE, lots of crits for will spells - wich will grant you +5 focus ON TOP of the focus you get anyway with Deception spells. It's great. With Time Parasite you can just spam powers so quickly. And besides all that you can still deal decent weapon damage (for a pure caster) if you wish. Not to speak of the huge impact that all mind control powers have on the gameplay. It's like removing an enemy and summoning a creature at the same time.

The Dracolich isn't very difficult to beat IF you know what you are doing. Complaining about no decent crush weapon besides Chromoprismatic and complaining about Dracolich's high Fortitude while most likely Saru Sichr and Willbreaker rot in the stash... it speaks volumes. But it can't be the player who's the foot, nohoo! If he can't win it has to be the developer's fault. Decorating this nonsense with lots of scatology rounds the picture of an entitled five year old with anger management issues. Wonder if that's the general approach for every challenge life throws at you. OP's complaint on the other hand is brought forward quite decently. It can of course be frustrating to run into such a wall. But without challenge no deep feeling of satisfaction - if you finally manage. There are enough people who solo the dragon with a plethora of builds on PotD. If you can't do it with a full party then it just shows that you didn't find the right angle - yet. For example there are weapon modals that can be very helpful against an enemy with high defenses. Dracolich's deflection isn't very high, so a club + modal is likely grazing sooner or later, lowering Will by 25. Follow up with a Miasma for -40 Will and suddenly all will based spells can hit very easily. Stuff like Shining Beacon for example. It also does Burn damage which the Dracolich is vulnerable to. Then of course you can get the help of three NPCs via quests. My preferred approach is a Morning Star + modal, a flail + modal, a club + modal on my frontliners and Miasma + an empowered Combusting Wounds, followed by a Wall of Flames. Dracolich usually goes down in under 60 secs. I once did him solo with a Geomancer who wielded a Morning Star. Body Blows on the Dragon, Takedown Combo + Killing Bolt with my wolf, Substantial Phantom + Draining Touch + Miasma pummels the Dragon into Oblivion. And that's without help from NPCs. That's not for bragging: it just shows that this fight is far from impossible - not even particularly hard - if you know what you are doing/know the mechanics of Deadfire. I saw guys using Shattered Vengeance on the dragon to good effect. Also fists do work well. Of course everything with fire is a good pick. If you only learn to use the tools that are in your belt the dragon will fall. Those modals and debuffs are there for a reason. It's not "LOLol I have a million dps!!11!!" which will win this fight. Find the gap, broaden it and then strike. Do not pummel the armor with sloppy high dmg attacks. That's a waste no matter how brutally brutal your brute force approach is. You have to make use of interrupts. First remove the layers of Concentration (there's plenty of time) and once he's about to cast something you interrupt with Knockdown, Thrust of Tattered Veil and so on. Don't waste your powder by just attacking him with everything you have right away. Again: Brute-forcing is not working here. Ignoring interrupt mechanics will give you a big disadvantage. And then there's the possibility to lower the difficulty. I mean sure it feels like defeat a bit. But it should feel less awkward than going to a forum and write a brat rant (not OP). If OP posts his/her party setup and abilities/equipment I'm sure we can come up with a strategy to beat Neriscyrlas without too much fuss and without lowering the difficulty. By the way I found the Beast of Winter to be an easier fight than Neriscyrlas.

Comparison of encounter design (PoE vs. Deadfire) depends on when you played PoE. Obsidian redesigned a lot of the encounters in one of the later patches of PoE and removed quite a number of "filler" encounters while they toughened up others.

With a lot of Eld Nary jumps (Phrase bonus + Empower) you will see that the Bellower bonus will expire before all jumps have been finished. But it seems that the number of jumps is not affected. It's just so that the last few jumps will have less dmg etc. due to less PL. Basically as if another chanter had cast them. It's a bit ehh but not that bad. Important that you keep the number of jumps. Seven Nights, unfortunately, is only a shadow of its PoE version. As I said it can be cool in certain situations but most of the time Eld Nary is the best choice. I don't know if it's still the case but Two Fingers+upgrade had fixed dmg which was not affected by grazes.

With a Bellower - especially when using Sasha's Singing Scimitar with the 1Empower/encounter enchantment - there's nothing better (offensively) than Eld Nary's Curse. Against single targets Seven Nights is not bad if you can manage to hit the enemy with several spikes at once. But it doesn't scale exceptionally well with PL. Thrice She was Wronged also scales ok since it's PL 1 and thus gets a lot of PL scalings which also improve PEN a lot. Also pretty handy against Ironclads and such.

You can simply cancel the action ("X" button). This will also reset your char and you don't have to move/disengage.

I tried Boil the Flesh several times and the only case where it makes sense is against very high AR targets. Yes, the max phrase count is not determined by level or power level but by the invocation with the highest cost. It's because unlike PoE in Deadfire the invocations of one PL can have different costs. This mechanic got criticized several times (because it's easy to miss) but it never got changed.

The invocation which profits the most from PL increase is Eld Nary's Curse. Phrases/Chants don't profit from increased PL at all. Summons are the invocation that profit least from PL bonuses because it only leads to increased base duration. THat's still not too bad, but not as good as compared to the bonuses that other invocations get. An often overlooked Invocation which scales well with PL is White Worms (non-upgraded) because it starts at a rel. low PL but has rel. high base dmg. That will scale by 5% with every additional PL. That increased base dmg then gets multiplied with the collection of additiive dmg bonuses (often only MIG and crit, but still) and does pretty decent damage for its low phrase cost. But usually Eld Nary's Curse is the best. Note that you should pick an invocation which has the max phrase cost. Because that will determine how high your phrase counter will climb. If you highest invocation cost is only 5 your counter will only climb to 5. If you have an invocation that costs 7 (even if you never use it) you can go up to 7 phrase ppoints an thus get a higher PL bonus as Bellower. Best offensive chants for the Bellower himself are Mith Fyr and The Long Night's Drink. The first gives you a muliplicative lash and the second makes it a lot easier to hit with Eld Nary's Curse.

I think we all do. Even less reason to rant like a dockside... escort.

I guess it's this: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/105732-bug-v21-commanded-ability-not-executed-flickering-action-icon/

Yes, I also experienced it several times before I stopped playing v4.1.2

I think there's no discussion which Priest version (PoE1 or Deadfire) is more powerful. But that's not the point if you want to know how the Priest class compares to the other classes in Deadfire when it comes to balance. The only gripe I have with Priests in Deadfire is their limited spell portfolio (the one you choose/compose at level-up) which forces you to skip most situational spells. Druids suffer from the same problem but at least have an additional alternative mechanic (Spiritshift). Wizards have Grimoires. If Priests (and Druids) had some trinkets that would add spells to their chosen ones (see grimoire) and maybe grant an additional cast here and there or a PL bonus for a keyword they would be in a fine place.

Which party-buffs does a wizard have? Isn't is a totally reasonable thing that a buff for 5 people takes longer than a self buff? Example: Disciplined Barrage (0.5 sec cast, self buff, Aware, 15 sec duration) vs. Dire Blessing (3.0 sec cast, 2.5 m radius AoE, Aware, 30 sec duration). Seems totally fair that putting the same Inspiration on 5 party members for twice the time takes a bit longer to cast.

I have nothing against some "full", non-unique prayerbooks like there are non-unique grimoires. But some argued that this might be too similar (or something. There were some good points that I forgot.:oops:). An alternative was to give only few spells but also give a passive bonus like +1 PL for Inspiration or Protection and so on - or +1 cast for a certain spell level or something like that. Just to make it more different from grimoires (while retraining the same base mechanics). I don't even think it has to be books in every case. But of course "prayerbook" (book with prayers and litanies) or something like a "vade mecum" (like a Handbook for healing spells) sound nice. But it couls also be a bulla (gives you seal spells), a relic of faith (maybe some of the priest summon spells), an ancient ecclesial tablet and so on. It's easy to use trinkets to add something to the game which makes the class more interesting without even touching the class itself. Same with Druids and shrinkheads, vodoo dolls, fetishes and so on. Just not this rel. uninspired trinkets we got with the DLCs (1 whatever non-class-related ability/rest). Maybe this is not polishing but better material for a "trinket" mod. But I think it will improve the gameplay of Priest and Druid a lot without making them too good. And I like the non-intrusive apporach since I don't like to tinker too much with class abilites and -mechanics themselves. FOr example I uso no mods besides the Advanced UI mod (which is superb but zero-intrusive in terms of mechanics and gameplay).

Please work on your mental issues with a professional threapist. Preferably one with a decent screaming room. We are too fragile and sensitive to carry that burden. We also are all very, very angry for different reasons - but we secretly and decently scream into our pillows. With lots of dignity...

I suggested trinkets which would give you prayers and/or litanies. Something like a prayerbook for example (mechanics just like a grimoire). In my opinion the easiest and least intrusive solution.

Hm... commission work. How much are you willing to pay?

This question would be placed best in the 'Technical Support --> Modding" subforum I think. Maybe there's still somebody around. I think you can't chance textures that easily. PoE isn't very mod-friendly.

*yaaaaawn* Examples please...

Nope. Maybe for the better.

Deep Pockets is something I personally would like to see on rogue only. But Quick Switch would be nice on every class in my opinion. Would also be nice if it affected grimoire switching. At the moment it seems that nothing affects that.