Boeroer

I do indeed pick no spells with a wizard unless I need to - or unless I always want access to that spell no matter what. Usually those are the spells I want to spam in quick succession at the start of combat (self buffs for example). But even for that you can find the proper grimoire (and start encounter with that one). I will pick passives with an SC Wizard over spells, knowing that I can get the spell with a grimoire. With a muticlass wizard I will pick mostly abilities of the second class. If I have to pick wizard abilities I will pick the generic ones I wanted to pick anyway (e.g. Two Handed Style when I play a Sage with Quarterstaff or Fast Runner if I play a ranged Geomancer). It's true that new players will not be able to exploit the grimoire mechanics - initially. There is retraining though. So nothing stops a new player from realizing that one doesn't necessarily need to pick spells. As soon as he has a nice collection of grimoires one could retrain and pick less spells - and only pick the spells that are not in the grimoires.

Then - I'm sorry - you guys are using grimoires ineffectively. Sure you can (and maybe want to - in case if SC Wizard heven have to) learn some spells with ability points - those that you always want to have access to without switching. But using a meticulously composed collection of up to 7 Grimoires (trinket slot + 6 quick item slots) can give you access to nearly all spells while you don't need to spend one single ability point. Switching Grimoires doesn't take a ton of time in Deadfire (Quick Switch doesn't help by the way). Of course meta knowledge is very handy here. So the system is totally designed to motivate Grimoire swapping. You could even make a collection of fire grimoires which you swap to once you switched to Magran's Favor + Sun & Moon - or some Illusion Grimoires once you switch to Eye of Wael and so on. The grimoire mechanic is such a huge advantage over Priests' and Druids' spell & trinket mechanic (hint: they have no trinket mechanic) that it's OP. To have access to all spells without retrainig. Even during an encounter you can have up to 14 different spells per spell level at your disposal. While the idea to give bonus PL for a spell that you learned and that's also in your current grimoire is nice - it would make an overpowered mechanic even more overpowered. Having no spells in grimoires makes no sense (unless we redifine grimoires as tomes which don't hold the actual spells but something like explanations, comments and "metamagical" knowledge about spells).

I'd also say yes.

Nope

Interesting. I don't have those problems on Linux. I mean during WotW the framerate drops like crazy - but afterwards it's back to normal.

Yes, the initial target gets twice the damage. A bit like Whispers of the Endless Paths was doing before nerf.

If you can cause Resolve afflictions in the party or by yourself reliably I would take those enchantments like The Mind makes Real etc.

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.