Boeroer

Yes. If you know how the ship combat works it's pretty easy. That's why I said that boarding is not a good alternative. You can't win against the BIBs or Thaenic if you go straight to boarding at lvl 8 or so. I mean you can maybe - but what a chore that would be. Much easier to blast them out of the water. I still don't think the ship combat is implemented nicely (for my taste) - but at least it's rewarding.

Priest/Ranger could be kind of meh maybe. I can't see any great synergies other than buffing your animal companion like crazy.

Priest/Druid is actually quite good if you pick up the Spine of Thicket Green and go full support/healing mode.

Yes, Haefric's Nose is a long range cannon. It is indeed very good. Also the quick reload and the huge range span it covers. But you don't need it. For example I didn't get it yet but still was able to sink all ships just with double bronzers which you can buy in Nekataka. I'm only lvl 8 by the way but quicky got Kapana Taga and stuff. Boarding is not a good alternative.

Sadly Long Pain does not work like in PoE where it was a "ranged melee" weapon. In Deadfire it works like a pure ranged weapon which means no melee abilities (but pure ranged ones like Driving Flight would work). If to you want "ranged melee" you would indeed need to go for Instruments of Pain (IoP). This just adds more reach to your melee weapons. If you have a reach weapon like a pike you will have a reach of nearly 11 meters with IoP. For normal melee weapon you'll only get something about 5 meters or so.

Also Salvation of Time is kind of weird for me. When I use it for the first time in an encounter it will give me ~20 sec. The second time it will give me the time it states in the tooltip.

Ok, then maybe it got fixed in the meantime.

If you want to take on a heavy ship with a much lighter ship then the Voyager is your best friend. You can't get around enemy ships (unfortunately) - but with a Voyager you can fire while advancing/retreating. You can use that, Palm Sails, Long Range guns in the bow (front) and a Magranite Flamethrower in the stern. Start firing from 600 meters (target sails) and once the enemy ship turns its gun ports towards you advance quickly (the to-hit chance of the enemy is much lower once you are going full speed and the Voyager itself has a much lower to-hit chance because it's small). Advance until you are <100m away. Usually enemy ships don't have cannons that can hit at that distance. Turn around and start firing with the Flamethrower. As soon as the enemy ship turns to ram you, advance a bit to keep a safe distance and fire again, rinse and repeat. Target sails. If the sails are destroyed the ship can't turn to fire and you can safely sink it. I sunk every ship (including Deck of Many Things) with this setup. Rathun are harder because their ships are very fast and also have guns in the bow. But I managed to sink them as well. I also sunk every ship in my current playthrough with the Sloop, 4 Double Bronzers and the Red Dream hull improvement (Dunnage). It gives your Sloop nearly as much hull points as a Junk while turning and doing jibes stays at 1 turn. lvl 4 cannoneers make a huge difference. If you manage to hit crew or rip sails or flood the ship the AI wil always stop firing and assign crewmembers which gives you a lot of time to jibe and fire.

You curmudgeon.

It used to be the same with Riposte. Also Whirling Strikes could be abused that way. Maybe those got fixed in the meantime. There's also some weird stuff going on with Red Hand + Cleaving Stance. I got an additional attack on kill although the Red Hand is obviously a ranged weapon. I reported it but got no answer so I guess that is still a thing.

Just share your character file I suppose. We'll see. I could easily put the files under each list entry in the build list. THis is going to be awesome. Also a lot more motivation to a) do a character build and b) refine it a bit with portrait and so on.

Steel Garrett? That's this blonde violinist, right? He strangles foes with his hair while playing a sad tune on his fiddle...

Hello! Now isn't that the sweetest new feature that I ever saw? Now we can share our builds as hirelings in a tavern. So awesome. Thanks a ton Deadfire Development Team!

What? since when can he do that? I totally missed that. Edit: well he can't in my game... Edit2: Ah - beta branch. Cool! THe new 3.1.0 patch has some of the best features I ever saw! Eder + pet, Spell Shaping as new caster passive. But most importantly: custom/premade hirelings! Yay!!!

If you are using a melee/ranged setup you will only attack with the melee weapon when in melee range and only with the ranged weapon when you are far away. Full Attacks will get executed with both weapons if you are melee but only the ranged ones will be used if you are far away. THat way you can abuse melee-only Full Attacks with ranged weapons in the offhand. For example: You have a sword and a pistol and you kill an enemy while using Cleaving Stance then both weapons will be used for the bonus Full Attack.

Lash damage is multiplicative, other dmg bonuses like Sneak Attack are additive. This will most likely not get altered because it has been the way those bonuses work since PoE1. Still a Rogue/Helwalker should deal more dmg than a Kind Wayfarer/Helwalker - but of course he wouldn't have those nice support abilites. Reloading weapons + support abilites like healing are such an advantage over recovery weapons. I can't count how many times my healer finished his spell a second too late because his recovery was in the way. Dual pistol + White Flames is hard to beat as well. Especially since you get a ton of pistols in the early to mid game. Dual Mortars are crazy good on a monk with Duality:INT and Stunning Surge (also obtainable very early). And there's something else: try out Flagellath's Path + dual mortars. Since you want to move around to heal party members Flagellant's Patch my be interesting anyways. It will trigger a Full Attack with mortars at the target and you can spam it because it doesn't trigger reload. It's pretty crazy dps. Also Cutthroat Cosmo is your best buddy. Bows and such as backup weapon once you face pierce immune enemies is an option. Later on I would recommend the Long Pain because it's just very good (very high ACC scaling) and a nice backup for pierce resistant enemies. Aamiina's Legacy is one of the best ranged dps weapons when it comes to auto-attacks, but it's neither the best pick for FoD nor Stunning Blows since its base damage is rather low and thus you spend a lot more Zeal or Mortification per point of damage. But of course flavour is an important part. If you like to be an archer then go for it. Also consider Ring of Focused Flames (steal or buy from Fassina). It will give your FoD attacks +10 ACC. For example: if you use the hunting bow's modal (-15 ACC for -50% recovery) with FoD you will end up with the same ACC as a warbow would have (without the ring) but with a lot higher attack speed. Since you will invest more zeal/mortification with a bow I would recommend Devil of Caroc's Breastplate for the nice +2 Zeal/+2 Mortification and Mortification Bindings for another +2 Mortification. That way you can do a lot more of those Stunning Blows, Lightning Strikes and FoDs.

Hi, a comprehensive answer would be very long. Maybe the build list is a good starting point: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/85492-the-obsidian-boards-build-list-last-modified-25-feb-17/page-1 Most of the basic build ideas there can be applied to the official companions. For example Kana makes a good "Drake's Ambassador" and Aloth works fine as "Hurtstacker" and so on. Iirc there's also a dedicated Pallegina build in the list.

Hu? Shot his ship to the ground with my sloop 10 min ago and Kapana Tags dropped. So I guess it's only a problem if you board?

Rekvu's Scorched Cloak makes you immune to all fire damage and instead heals you. Perfect for a caster who likes to nuke his surroundings (and himself) with fire spells. Add Magran's Favour and Sun and Moon for +4 Power Level for all fire spells and wear Ring of Focused Flames for +10 ACC with fire spells. Other items with effects on casting are Blightheart and Chromoprismatic Staff.

What do you mean by "one more"? Beckoners do get twice the summons (with lesser health) so they should deal twice the damage (in an optimal setup where all summons can reach the enemy and the summons don't die prematurely). Or what did I miss? By the way: don't know if it got fixed but the skeletons (while handy as CC tools because they engage) are horrible for dealing damage. They scale their stats but they are wearing a poor quality sword which didn't scale last time I tried Beckoner. So most of the time they will suffer from severe underpenetration. If you want to deal dmg with summons like Animated Weapons and stuff you could think about getting Animancy Cat as pet (+2 MIG and +1 PEN for summons).

I value Concussive Tranquilizer over Arcane Dampener because with mortars or rods you can apply it twice or even thrice (Fire in the Hole) with one shot in an AoE - but most of all it's way easier to hit with it (being a ranger with tons of accuracy bonuses and all).

For more crits with Flames of Devotion check out Ring of Focused Flames. It can be obtained early and gives your FoD attacks +10 Accuracy (on top of the +10 it already gets). Doing crits with Flames of Devotion shouldn't be a problem then. Kapana Tags is another nice weapon that leads to more crits (than the average weapon): it lets you engage up to +2 enemies and gets +4 Accuracy per engaged enemy. It comes with +5 because it's a club and all clubs have that. So if you engage two enemies you already have +13 Accuracy with that club (stacks with FoD and Focused Flame bonuses). It also has dual damage types and is a fast weapon.

Do it!

Avenging Storm on Heaven's Cacophony is 1/rest.

It's an offhand-only item like a shield. It's no bug but intended. No idea why.