Boeroer

The boots have 2 charges per rest. You can lure the slavers out a bit with Sparkcrackers so you can jump in, steal and jump back while they are investigating. But it's very tricky...

Hm... If iirc it doesn't if you keep to the dungeon. But you will know if you try it and the game tell you that a quest failed. With Dazzling Lights/Sparkcrakers, decent stealth and Bounding Boots I think you can get the Willbreaker without a fight I think. Usually I get it asap and also pick the quest after - but since I usually opt to kill all slavers anyway I'm no too sure what happens if you kill around in the dungeon and then want to work with the slavers. By the way: Saru Sichr (Arkemy's Basement) is better than you might think and a good replacement until you get Willbreaker. Lately I even use both on different chars. THat is because the Poinon-Dipped + upgrades applies every time you hit and all the DoTs stack in parallel - meaning the chance to trigger e.g. Death Sentence with every tick gets a lot higher as gets the damage per tick.

Grimoires as in PoE would have been too strong for Deadfire. Even now the mechanic is too strong in my opinion. Because as others said: grimoires let you completely skip all spells at level up and only pick passives - yet you don't loose the ability to cast any spell you want (as soon as you know where to get the fitting grimoires - but they drop so frenquently and you can buy/steal so many...). This isn't as obvious with SC Wizards since they don't have that many passives to pick from, but muticlass Wizards can put everything into their second class and will still not gimp theyr spellcasting ability or range of spells if they have a good range of grimoires. Here more Qick Item slots (Depp Pockets, Fleshmender, Giftbearer's Cloak) really make sense. If Priests and Druids had trinkets of their own which would give them some advantages with their abilites or ability choice in general I wouldn't complain, but atm grimoires are a (too) powerful boon to Wizards. Giving them the option of learning spells from grimoires and editing grimoires (which makes not much sense anyway unless you'd fill an empty one with you special spell collection) would lift them even higher. Then remember all the cheese when retraining in PoE so you could learn ALL spells from grimoire at lvl 1 and would pick the spells you didn't cover with grimoires yet in order to have th biggest "in-memory" spell collection possible. Nay... I think the current grimoire mechanics are in a better spot than in PoE. Or were if they gave Priests and Druid trinkets to play with in order to balance those "spell-use" casters better wich each other. As a sidenote: not only Obsidian decided which spells are in grimoires. Most of the unique ones are actually backer items. They contain great unique spells. Zandethu's Draconic Fury, my my...

Drawback of the Voulge: won't raise beyond superb quality. I personally don't care that much, but it's a thing. The advantage is that you can get it to higher quality and enchantment levels while being a low lvl char - which you can't do with Spirit Lance (and you have to get the spell in the first place).

I think they are ok now. Making them as good as a normal shield in terms of defense AND giving the same advantages as a melee weapon would be too good. But the quality scaling should be done properly for the bashing stats (PEN, DMG bonus, ACC) as well not only for the defensive ones.

Afair you have to have the Voulge equipped at the moment you traverse from >= 50% to < 50%. You can switch once you sense that this will happen soon and then switch back to whatever weapon - but there's some timing and anticipation involved and so it's much more fiddly than your variant no. 1.

Yes. It can be a bit confusing.

ROFLMAO! Only wrong in the sense that it is "older gamers." Compared to fresh young pups that are just getting into gaming the last 5 years the context is probably accurate. Only wrong in the sense that it is "older gamers"? That's like saying "Most green bananas are sweeter than yellow ones" - "Wrong" - "Only wrong if sweetness is concerned". The statement as a whole was wrong. Besides that annoying habit of constantly speaking for others and making up "facts" out of the blue - which is also wrong. Nice insights from you though. Thanks for that. I don't get all this "XY is evil because they don't produce what I like anymore" anyway.

I forgot to answer the question about Soulbounds with multiclasses: When you bind the Soulbound you decide to which class you bind it to. I mean if both classes are allowed to bind it in the first place. So as Brute you have to decide if you want to bind the Voulge to your Fighter or your Barb class.

It is supposed to be greyed out and to have a conditional statement in bracktets. That means under certain conditions (when not using a Great Sword) you would get this penalty. But I'm sure if you sum up your current numbers you will see that your Great Sword's ACC doesn't actually suffer from it.

Na - I mean you did a great explanation and I think generally it clears up a lot of things. What would explain it: if a uses his feet to target the feet of b but b uses his eyes to target a's head. OR maybe Rooksx didn't mean that b could target a while a couldn't target b - but maybe there was a c down there who could target a but a couldn't target b which was standing near c.

ROFLMAO!

But how would be b be able to target a if a can't target b?

Yeah I have no idea why the enemy would be able to target Maia and Xoti if the two can't target them back.

Depends. Body Blows works very well with stuff like Mule Kick. But until you get Clear Out you won't do much AoE dmg compared to the Voulge (besides Carnage). But if you have party members who profit a lot from lowering a single enemy's fortitude (and will) as well then the Morning Star (in this case Willbreaker, combined with Spirit Frenzy and also a Yell/Shout) is a great option in order to have a great damage/debuff mix in my opinion. Once you get Clear Out (and use it as your go-to dmg skill) I like Willbreaker better in general because I ususally value a stackable -25 debuff on fortitude in an AoE above the Voulge's multiple stacking of Static Thunder (which is pretty great though - I mean you will apply Static Thunder AoEs with every of the Clear Out hits because of Carnage). It's just two different approaches/roles. dmg/debuff or pure dmg. I guess the Voulge has more appeal to most people because the dmg numbers are pretty awesome and the strategy is very simple - while the bonuses of the Morning Star are somewhat obscured and need more timing and teamwork to really shine.

The problem is that the "world" of Deadfire is actually flat and has no real elevations. It's hand-drawn, isometrical and flat and all elevations are sort of optical illusions. At least that's what it looks like and behaves. Thus, the targeting can be a bit messed up when perceived elevations are involved I guess.

Even better if you deliver the Toxic Strike with Bleeding Cuts from Battle Axes + Deep Wounds.

There is a fun variant with the Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer + Forgemaster Gloves. Gives you Firebrand 6 times per rest (which is plenty). The blade, especially when it's doing crits, will give you focus overflow. Once you get Time Parasite the build goes totally bonkers. Stats don't matter that much if you don't dump anything. Pick all dmg bonuses you can get (Two Handed Style, Biting Whip, Scion of Flame - increses Firebrand's dmg by 20% - items with bonus dmg to flanked enemies, survival with bonus dmg to flanked enemies - then use Phantom Foes a lot, go the Doemenel route for Merciless Hand, get Dungepon Delver and so on). It does tremendous damage and is fun to play. Also the key items (belt and gloves) can be obtained pretty early.

There are some encounters that keep being tough - like in Splintered Reef for example.

For a tanky apporach Balanced Shield is very good in my opinion. Outward Spikes' dmg is meh. Swift Flurry/Hearbeast Drumming does work with the bash. But since the base dmg is pretty low it's not jawdropping even if it triggers. The best part about Tuotilo's Palm for a Forbidden Fist in my opinion is Inward Spikes, Balanced Shield and Precision Striker. If you also have Crucible and Imagined Pain (SC Monk at Power Level 9) you can achieve nice defenses while still having decent offense and a constant stream of wounds - which is the most pressing problem for a Forbidden Fist (unless you like to walk through Pulls of Eora all the time). Multiclassed with Paladin or Fighter (or Wizard) you can achieve even higher defenses (afaik Balanced Shield stacks with Crucible and then either Vigorous Defense, Paladin's passives or Wizard's Illusions - and here Llengrath's Safeguard also stacks on top).

Lots of summons didn't scale properly with char level. Did you check if that got fixed? Other than that... you shouldn't have big problems with this fight if you could do the other ones. I never felt like this last battle was particularly difficult compared to the other challenges. Since the Crocs have very high fortitude but most of the really good spells of ciphers and wizards target that you might need a Morning Star to make sure that stuff like Combusting Wounds sticks. What also helps is Death of 1000 Cuts combined with Combusting Wounds and Antipathetic Field (! only that works with Death oTC). This should melt anything - also combine with Disintegration if you can. That also targets Fortitude. Maybe for me it's never that hard because I always focus on fortitude (and will) debuffing.

Funny coincidence: Did this last weekend as well with a lvl-8 party (Edér as SC Fighter with The Willbreaker/Kapana Taga/Endre's Flog of Obedience as debuffer, Tekēhu as SC Druid with Deltro's Cage/Voulge as CC/debuffer/dmg dealer, Aloth as SC Wizard with White Witch Mask/Eye of Wael as CC/debuffer and a custom Debonaire/Bloodmage as dmg dealer) with a SC Beguiler as MC as CC/dmg. No dedicated tanks. Edér and Tekēhu in the front line mostly. Nobody went down because they all kept firing/hacking at their constantly charmed/dominated friends (Poweder Monkeys have rel. low Will defenses). But there was always the threat of getting focused fired if I did mess up the timing of the will debuffs and charms. If you can keep some enemies charmed you really don't need a tank. But if you mess it up you are screwed. But I think that's challenging and fun. What's really kind of broken is Tekēhu's special spells that turn powerful friendly fire spells into foe-only spells (Chillfog for example). Really helps in those messy fights (like this one - it always turns into a mess - no idea why. Those guys run around like crazy. Maybe also because I don't have a lot of engagement in this party). Debonaire/Bloodmage with a Beguiler (or other Cipher) in the party only starts to pay off once you get Ringleader. Before that it's just too much micro to "exploit" the 100% crit conversion. Although against single targets like Torkar it's already nice. You just have to judge if it's worth it to break the charm with a spell-crit or weapon-crit or if it's more benefical to keep him charmed. Some CC spells actually don't break the charm. So you can apply a hard crit-CC which lasts a lot longer and then do a crit-dmg spell and keep on attcking the CC'd enemy. I mean against kith (like in this case) a Debonaire is just great in general. His charm is very long lasting, it's fast and the ACC is also good. 100% crit conversion doesn't work on dominated enemies by the way, only charmed. Key is to charm/dominate enemies from stealth if you can. That way they immediately get focused by their friends and nobody cares about you. Works a lot better with Puppet Master than with Whisper oT - because it has a much higher range (no stealth skill needed).

Yes, as soon as there's elevation differences most AoE and "AoE-Line" spells don't work properly when it comes to "physics". I guess that's just a snag of using a 2D isometric system with no "real" elevations.

Mortification works, yes. Enervating Blows' Weakenend will not override Enfeebled. It will simply get suppressed. Parting Sorrow: only when they break engagement with you. In other words: when you would get a disengagement attack against them. Push effects and all afflictions that cancel engagement (terrify, paralyze and so on) will not trigger disengagement attacks. First the engagement gets canceled and then the effect (in this case pushing) takes place. No "breaking" and no disengagement attack here. The Outward Spike's strike is (afaik) just a bash with the shield - but I'm not really sure. I once tested it but my memory is fuzzy about this. Others will know better. The Long Pain will simply replace both weapon slots with the Long Pain fists - no matter what you were carrying. The shield will be gone until the Long Pain expires. Instruments of Pain will give the main melee weapon and the shield a range of +500% (or *6 in other words). Enfeebled + Plague: good question. Didn't test this, so no idea. I mean if the target is enfeebled and then gets hit by a DoT it will surely get the +50% duration. But the other way round I'm not so sure.

Depends: They are pretty handy for ranged casters who only want to use a ranged weapon occasionally but at the same time don't want to get toasted by ranged enemies and thus want more deflection. You'll get higher attack speed and recovery (also good to be able to react more quickly) and higher defelction and reflex. They count as melee weapons and thus unlock tha usage of some melee-only abilites like Clear Out, Hunter's Claw, Whirling Strikes and so on with ranged weapons in the main had. Example Clear Out + Hand Mortar or Blunderbuss + Hunter's Claw (+8 ACC per shot due to 4 pellets). This also works with any other melee weapon instead of a bashing shield, but since those abilites don't use the offhand anyway you can as well go for the added deflection & reflex. But generally I agree.