Boeroer

There are three companions that also appear in Deadfire as potential party members: Aloth, Edér and Pallegina.

Form of the Fearsome Brute: it works like Spiritshift (you transform and your gear is gone temporarily). You'll have a club as weapon and can't switch. Other than Spiritshift you also get -4 INT but +MIG and +CON (can't remember the exact numbers).

Combining AoE attacks (Minor Blights, Blast or Spirit Lance) with offensive abilities and Swift Flurry and/or Cleaving Stance seems to be the most broken thing right now. Also: Blade Turning with high INT and high DEX. You can make yourself invulnerable against melee attacks 100% of times while reflecting the enemies' disengagement attacks back at them.

Once the Spike Flinger is fixed and upgraded it's quite fast. The only drawback is that stacked reloading bonuses have reduced impact with every added bonus. That's because it is calculated like so: 100 frames reloading time (just an exemplary number) with Gunner (-20%) = 80 frames. 80 frames with Sure Handed Ila (-20%) = 64 frames. 64 frames with Spike Flinger's bonus (-50%) = 32 frames (I assume). And so on. But maybe the Flinger does it differently because it's a bonus on a weapon. But generally you can't reach 0 reloading time because those bonuses get multiplied, not added. Of course every bonus still does something, but it's effect is diminished the more bonuses you stack.

After the first 4 or 5 levels I seldomly use summons.

It's a Coastal Aumaua with the brownish head and red skin color.

No, but if you use heavy armor and a slow weapon your recovery will be long after an attack und you have to wait longer until LoH will get casted. With low recovery on weapon attacks you can be more spontaneous with active support abilities.

There are Death Knights in the game (those are vessels - see lvl 8 Endless Paths and also Concelhaut's Tower) but I always had the feeling that they don't really fit into the game's lore (other than Alguls and such).

With Gunner and Sure Handed Ila you can reduce reloading times a lot, too.

Thing is: if you post a build that you played on PotD and which worked pretty nicely, the chances that this build will perform well on all other difficulty settings is very high. It doesn't work that well the other way round. That's the main reason I always play on PotD and talk about mechanics/gameplay/viability of builds with PotD in mind. I don't think that a lot of people who intend to play PoE or Deadfire once or maybe twice will play on PotD. I started my first PoE playthrough on normal, too (because I wasn't part of the PoE beta).

Please elaborate... On your "full first game?", I don't believe it's that high. Even for this forum.I've put 200 hours into the Deadfire beta so far - most of them with PotD as well - and I don't find Deadfire's PotD to be particularly different from PoE's PotD. Why shouldn't I start with PotD when Deadfire comes out? For me it's not very difficult (based on the experience with the beta) for obvious reasons. So why should I start with classic or veteran? Thus I think that calling me a liar is a very strong (and wrong) statement. My hours for PoE are 4800+ - can't say how much of it is actual gaming time. Maybe 3/4th or so.

Miss/graze/hit/crit was a great step forward. Can't understand why people wouldn't like it.

Please elaborate...

By the way: I never bothered to check if there are weapons that have a particular big damage difference between min/max. I imagine that for example fists with Novice's Suffering are not that good with Confident Aim or Comtessa's Gage (min damage is only 5 and the variance is only 3 points). But are there some weapons (maybe unique or soulbound) where the difference/variance is especially high?

Yes - nicely explained. When I said "works like Confident Aim" I only meant that it adds something to your min damage. The way it gets calculates is different of course. I actually didn't know how Confident Aim and Comtessa's Gage work together (like - what comes first and so on) - now I do.

It works with Blast. So if you hit 5 enemies with Blast the chance to dominate is ~41%.

Yes, her natural speed is pretty slow so -2 roots her in place.

I have not seen the high level spells nor do I know which impact the earlier gain of higher level abilities will have in the early/mid/late game. Therefore I can't say if a single class nuker is better or worse than a multiclass one. I can only say that Fury/Evoker was fun to play in the Beta (with MaxQuest's casting speed mod).

I'd go for a Citzal's Spirit Lance Wizard, then a priest of Skaen with Firebrand (Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer + Forgemaster Gloves) and a Priest of Berath with Tidefall. All of them would use Veteran's Recovery I guess.

Slow? You mean running here and there for resting bonuses? If you have meta knowledge you know exactly where high mechanics is needed and you can rest accordingly. You don't need mechanics 15 all the time. There's also a rite scroll that can help from time to time with mechanics.

That's not really a scroll.

It is bugged and gets slower and slower with every upgrade...

They were underpowered before a certain patch that made class/tusks/etc. and armor scale with level. Same patch also raised animal companion's damage and DR.

It's a parole for a gem trader in Ondra's Gift. He's located north-east of the Salty Mast in a back alley and he's only there at night. Besides that I have no idea what it means. It sounds like "I am an elf" in Low German though.

In a solo run it's quite common to do split-pulling, kiting and so on.