Boeroer

Imo they are fine for PotD. Custom adventurers will be better in the long run for sure, but at the early stages of the game (which are the most tricky for a lot of players) the official companions have the advantage of one additional level (adventurers start with your level -1). Also, custom adventurers are a little boring compared to the OCs, since they have 0 banter, dialogue, quests etc. Just the usual barks when you command them to do something etc. Imo Xoti is fine as SC Priest, at least for me. I'm not a big fan of her Monk subclass (unless you build around some of her special passives) and want to get access to the good Priest buffs asap, so that's why I use her as SC Priest 90% of times. Getting stuff live Devotions for the Faithful Earl can make a bug difference in party performance for example. You shouldn't try to tank with your animal companion, usually it doesn't have the defenses or armor to withstand a lot of punishment. A Stalker's Bear with Resilient Companion at 4m distance is the best armor you can get and it makes the bear a lot tougher, but it's still not a good tank. Instead use Sporelings (did you pick the Ancient, don't remember, sorry) for tanking (if you have no other solid tank). With Wild Growth they become very tough (it lasts forever theoretically and practically it's over when when the summons disappear (from damage or bc. they expire). If you didn't pick the Ancient then this is pretty useless advice obviously. Other low tier summons of the Druid are not good at this, so better use a main tank like Edér or a custom adventurer or so. The Animal Companion has the advantage of not getting injured if it drops. So with sufficient resources you can revive it indefinitely. Still it's better to use it as "marker" and flanker in not-so crowded spots. Keep it by your side (stealthed if possible) when the combat starts and only send it in once the enemies settled on their opponents. Later on, with more healing options, buffs, abilities and revives it can become more reliable - or used as cheap decoy to lead enemies away. If it dies you just revive. This is often less "action-economically" expensive than a summon and it stacks with your summons. I find ACs very useful mostly, but it needs some experience to figure them out I guess. Anyway: don't use it as main tank or so (at least that would be my advice). But if this character generally isn't fun then maybe it's not worth trying, but maybe it would be better to start anew with something more "frontloaded", meaning it performs better right from the start of the game and doesn't need a certain char level to suddenly become fun to play.

Hi! Major changes: nope. The features are identical mostly as far as I remember. But the loading times will be long if you don't have an SSD (does every PS5 have that?) because the backgrounds of the levels are huge hand-"painted", prerendered files so that may take some time to process (compared to a fast PC with an SSD). Also I hear that there are some new bugs after porting it ot consoles and those didn't really get fixed. I think it's nothing gamebreaking, but there were complaints (while the PC version is rel. free of nasty bugs).

First Saru Sichr, then the Willbreaker. It also lowers Will on hit which is good for several good chanter invocations because they target Will (see Ben Fidel's Neck and Killers Froze Stiff etc.). Yes, although the PEN bonus is way more important than the damage bonus. I wouldn't max Survival for that alone. Yes - but there are a lot better AoE weapons for Whispers of the Wind because WotEP has a cone that you can't aim manually during the execution of WotW... and thus it often gets targeted in directions where nobody stands. Better options are the two hand mortars (especially with Blindin Smoke - counts as weapon attack and causes Resonant Touches - and Chain Shot - additional bounce of the AoE of the mortar whichg is also great for Resonant Touch), Keeper of the Flame is very good in combination with Saint's War Armor and Imagined Pain (endless wounds with no received damage). Also Watershaper's Focus with modal (Blast) and Ondra's Wrath is very nice. Mohora Tanga in the offhand and a mortar or Keeper of the Flame in the main hand is also a very good combo if you pick Swiuft Flurry + Heartbeat Drumming. The Red FLag DoT can trigger a main hand attack with Swift Flurry - because alls attacks from Swift FLurry and Heartbeat Drumming will be executed with the main hand weapon, even if it got triggered by an offhand weapon attack.

The synergy isn't jawdropping in terms of the mechanics of Battle Forged I think, but thematically it fits very well. If you combine the Firebrand Great Sword (from Forgemaster Gloves and/or Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer) with any weapon focus, Two Handed Style, FoD, Intense Flames and Scion of Flame you will not only get more fire theme goodness but also pretty monstrous FoD-damage. Little synergy with Battle-Forged: the flame shield of the Darcozzi Paladin stacks with Battle Forge iirc.

Nope, they won't stack unfortunately. Animal Companion will replace druid summons and vice versa. So Stalker is def. a better pick than Ghost Heart imo - if you want to use any of the druid's summons.

My confession is that I never really used that shield - although I mostly play with the companions (not with the sidekicks that much).

Ah yes, you are right. I totally forgot about that to be honest.

Yes, I optimized a Ranger/Monk for it - and it became unplayable at some point (except vs. bosses) because my game crashed so much. So maybe not optimizing it is the way to go.

Mohora Tanga with single handed use (and style) and some ACC gear and crit conversion, combined with Boltcatchers or Hylea's Talons and also Ring of Molded Flesh is very good with a SC Druid who uses Avenging Storm, too. I also like the combo of a Druid with any class that grants easy access to accuracy (Monk & Ranger mostly, Helwalker specifically because of the nice MIG boost on top of the INT boost) because accuracy is the only thing a Druid is lacking sometimes - especially because some of the cool spells go agaist Fortitude and that is often quite high on the bigger and tougher enemies. I played a Stalker/Ancient recently and was pleasantly surprised about how good he was. Not only great accuracy vs. singular and multiple targets, but also 2 good summons (Sporelings) + Animal Companion in combination with healing and revival (AC don't get injuries so using revival multiple times is cool).

Yes, Tyranny also had a nice system with the spell building - but afair it wasn't combining spells/spell effects that where already cast on the ground (or in the air or onto enemies) into greater spell effects. In DA:O you didn't craft a spell from differnet effects and then cast that new spell - but you cast spell 1, then somebody else or you cast spell 2 (and 3 eventually) on the same spot (or enemy) and the effects would "hook into other" and create a new, much more powerful effect. Like you could cast some sigils on the floor which weren't too powerful by themselves - but if you cast two of them on on top of the other suddenly a new sigil would form that was the best CC effect in the game iirc. But the general approach of Tyranny on how to "craft" spells from different effects was nice, yeah. What totally killed it for me though was the cooldown mechanic then. "Cannot concentrate on a few spells, must create a ton of spells to prevent downtime..." - gahh! Well - I ranted about that multiple times now so I will let it rest today.

Yeah, right - but you all didn't really get it. The things above are true, but they are also true for Saru Sichr (additional weapon effect - like a DoT or an affliction or on interrupt etc. - does its own attack roll which counts as regular weapon attack) and some other weapons such as Sanguine Blade, Wicked Beast and more. That absolutely helps with Swift Flurry/HBD, but that's not what makes Mohora Tanga so special. The main difference between Mohra Tanga and all other weapons with secondary attack rolls is that "Red Flag Flying" (that's the DoT, the seconday ttack roll) will proc ITSELF when it crits. And that proc can crit, triggering itself agai... and again... you get the idea I guess. All by itself - it doesn't need any additional ability to do that. What that means is that even without any Swift Flurry/HBD stuff you will get endless crit chains of Red Flag Flying if you have a 100% crit chance. And enough crit chains even with moderate crit chance. Now - those DoTs from Red Flag Flying don't stack with themselves - it just refreshes the duration - so those crit chains of just Red Flag Flying are not overly useful by themselves. You need something else that procs off of weapon attacks. Aha... now think about gear such as Boltcatcher Gloves or spells such as Avenging Storm. Basically everything that gets triggered by weapon hits or crits will work. And even if it ony procs in 10% of cases or so - still viable because you can generate whole chains of crits so relatively easily. And yes: Swift Flurry and HBD work with that whole shebang, too! With a Monk it's now ridiculously easy to achieve literally gamebreaking chains of crits - because SF/HBD and Red Flag Flying will fuel each other. It's like one crit from a fat chain might very likely trigger a new fat crit chain - that's why the game tends to crash if your ACC vs enemies' deflection becomes too overpowering - the game can't handle virtually infinite crits. It gets relatively easy to deliver crit chains with thousands points of damage to a (mega)boss - but it also becomes very easy to crash the game against underleveled or just weak enemies. Other class combos can profit - as I said it's not really about SF/HBD (although the interaction is devastating) - it's about Red Flag Flying triggering itself (=melee weapon attack) potentially endlessly. For example a Druid or Stormspeaker with Avenging Stormand decent accuracy - or anybody with Boltcatcatchers, Gatecrashers really can become a crit chainer then. But beware: triggering 100 Avenging Storms in a fraction of a second will most likely freeze your screen for a moment and also might crash the game. Props go to @Constentin Lévinewho discovered this. Nobody else did because I guess nobody else before bothered to use that spear - because its stats just look underwhelming compared to other spears.

Battle Forged (Fire Godlike) scales its base damage really nicely - but it's only worth it if you build around it a bit imo. Like here: or here: The rest of the Godlikes' racial abilities is not worth it imo, given the good helmets you can get (see Tempered Helmet or Company Captain's Hat for example). Moon Godlike is very good in the early game, but not later in the game imo. The rest: nah... Just my personal experience of several playthroughs though and only related to the mechanics. From a roleplying point of view it may look completely different of course.

Mirke (Streetfigher/Monk) is very good with Serafen's two mortars + modal on and a focus on Stunning Surge as the main attack option. Of course she will also be very good as single class Monk. Konstanten as Skald/Barbarian can be a nice passive debuffer when you give him The Long Night's Drink and pair it with Spirit Frenzy. Any hit with the chant will then apply Weakened (-10 Fortitude) and Staggered (-10 Fortitude on top) and that works very well in combinatio with a Morning Star with modal (-25 fortitude, again on top) and Brute Force (targets fortitude instead of deflection - and fortitude will be reduced by 45 points...) Fassina can be cool to build as SC Conjurer and then later use gear optimized for bow shooting and use the Essential Phantom in combination with Caedebald's Blackbow. You will then have two shooters on the battlefield that terrify with their auto-attacks. And the bow targets fortitude instead of deflection - see Konstanten. Ydwen: no special idea, never kept her for too long.

Troubadour/Psion is really fun and not boring in my experience - especially because that combo can be extremely versatile and you almost never have to wait for something since there's nearly always enough resources for taking impactful action. Of course: if you focus completely on summons and mind control alone (which is an extremely forgiving playstyle) then it can be a drag - but that class combo can do almost everything well (besides weapon combat). One of the most enjoyable characters I had so far. Ultimate runs are always extremely long and tedious imo, especially when it comes to megabosses *zzzzz*... class combo doesn't really matter when it comes to boredom (while watching) imo. I like the general concept of Skald but I have two problems with it in comparison with Troubadour: It's difficult to completely overlap two phrases without pause - unless you are a Skald/Monk with Duality oMP:INT... or max out INT right from the start and concentrate on INT items. Melee crits are quite the unreliable source of phrases on PotD, especially later in the game against the tough nuts. Well - unless you pick Monk with Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming and use Mohora Tanga (because causing a crit is more likely bc. of two hit rolls per attack - and a crit with the DoT is very likely to lead to a chain of crits which will make sure you get that 1 phrase). What I like about it are the extremely cheap low-tier-starting offensive invocations, especially Her Revenge, KIllers Froze Stiff and Ben Fidel's Neck. Because should you gain a crit-phrase you can almost always cast such an invocation directly afterwards (since they only cost 2 or 3 phrases).

DA:O had very simplistic class and ability "trees" and therefore limited potential for multiple different builds - which would have motivated me to play it several times more (like I did with PoE/Deadfire). But I enjoyed it still. What was quite nice was the ability to combine spell effects (from one or multiple casters) into "secret special spells" that you could discover by simply trying it out. I played a guy who specialized on that sigil-combo that pushed enemies around like ragdolls, which was fun because afair there was no defense against it. And two casters (one Morrigan, the other I don't remember) went on to unlock "Storm of the Century" which was not only very powerful (see Great Maelstrom) but also looked and sounded awesome. I haven't played an RPG since then where you could do the same.

No it will not. Because first the actual projectile (arrow) will hit the enemy (with the assassinate bonus) which then lifts the invisibility immediately. All following attack rolls from AoEs and whatnot will be done when you are already visible, so no assassinate bonus.

A multiclass Monk can also stack very high defense bonuses against disengagment attacks (Fast Runner + Tumbling and then items) so Nomad's Brigandine isn't strictly mandatory to make this work - however, it gives you 100% reliability while sparing several ability points and item slots. And it also gives good bonus deflection against melee attacks and has high AR - so the best armor for yuch an approach I would say. Btw: as a SC Monk it's also cool in combination with Imagined Pain. Gaining wounds from disengaging AND an Offensive Parry (which works with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming by the way) ist pretty neat.

Except when the damage is done by a hazard spell (that's Wall spells for a Wizard) - but those don't profit from Assassinate.

After the first day of release it was estimated to have sold around 20K copies on Steam iirc, now it's between 20 and 50K - but that's just numbers from SteamSpy and so on, so not really reliable. It also doesn't take into account non-Steam purchases (Microsoft Store for example). Also - since it's an XBox GamePass title - a lot of players won't have to buy it in order to play it. I don't think neither Josh nor Microsoft expected Pentiment to really make money from sales alone - but given the very good receptions and the buzz, combined with the very small team (13 devs in total), the presumably small budget and the solid price ($20) it might do?

That's also what I do. I usually don't really rest though but simply use the waiting function. This also works for Vithrak Brains and all the other creature parts.

I read a lot of feedback on Twitter, often to Josh directly. Much more than for PoE and Deadfire. I think Pentiment is a game that is mostly played by a different target audience than the other titles of Obsidian. And most of those people might not want to post here (or don't even know this forum even exists) and use less "gamorphile" platforms. And also: the sales numbers will not be at AAA level of course.

Yes, it's kind of a non-stackable status effect - like for example Sure-Handed Ila etc.

Why does Bloodmage make no sense? Mechanically it's the most potent Wizard subclass.

Right, but the Domination from the Ring of Changing Heart has no ACC bonus like the charm of Spirit Spiral/Munacra Arret has.

It was mainly made for XBox GamePass - so the sales on Steam might be lower as they would be if it wasn't a GamePass title - I guess. Also the requirements for GamePass titles seem to be somewhat different: a game that is not played by millions but gets overwhelmingly good criticism as well as press outside of the usual gamer bubbles may be more valuable to Microsoft than a GamePass title that would appeal to a broader audience but is otherwise unexciting. Besides that: some merch of Pentiment is already sold out, for example the playing cards. Also keep in mind that this game was made by only 13 devs in 3 years. That is a very small team and a rel. short time compared to other games that cost about the same. Also it has no VO (= 1 cost explosion out). So of course the sales don't need to be that high to turn it into a profitable project. Anyway: I just hope that the sales numbers somewhat follow the praise - Josh and his teammates at Obsidian deserve that after Deadfire's disappointing release I think. PS: it runs well on the Steam Deck and in general seems to be a title that would work well with any sort of mobile device. It is made with Unity3D again (as were PoE and Deadfire).