Boeroer

I did it with a wizard (Concelhaut's Staff) and a monk (Torment's Reach). With the rest of the classes I failed so often that I didn't try it further. I really wanted to do it with a Bleak Walker but he wasn't able to really hurt Odema... so I quit. A pike or quarterstaff is def. the way to go. Once you have one of those weaklings in front of you you just keep hitting the enemy behind that one while he body-blocks for you. Obviously doesn't work with a barb.

Er... what?

To that a I agree mostly. They are possibly breaking more stuff while they want to patch up resolve which was a dump stat for almost everyone because concentration was no longer bound to it. But instead of adding something new and useful to resolve (like for example that it influences afflictions on you) while leaving the rest of the stats as they used to be - they toppled the whole thing over. While I'm not totally against the change when I only look at STR and RES I also fear that this change may lead to a whole string of consequences that are not intended. Like now we will suddenly have nukers and healers with a lot of deflection. Before the change they were strong, now they are masters of melee defense... and stuff like that. Still the druid is not really gimped with this change. Still works perfectly well. It's just not possible any more to min-max him in such a way that he can do everything very well that a druid can possibly do. Don't know if this is a bad thing to be honest.

Does rod's blast use RES as well? I don't think so...

By the way: a Bleak Walker/Skald with Shared Flames + Mith Fyr was fun to play. You party gets some good lashes that way. Had to console it in though because lvl 9 is not enough.

I didn't actually check the Beckoner nerf. What's it now? Longer summoning time? That would be stupid.

I also didn't check if Carnage crits count as melee crits for the Skald (I checked with Skald/Wizard with Citzal's Spirit Lance though and it doesn't!). But a Berserker/Skald can stack 50% + 50% hit-to crit conversion in an AoE through Tenacious + AoE paralyze - which is pretty great per se even without faster phrase replenishment. The conversion also works for successive paralyzes on the same targets. And with the frenzied attack speed + dual weapons the Skald/Berserker can easily keep whole groupes stunlocked. Also, a Mage Slayer barb with a Skald can combine the special interrupting effect with the Anti-Concentration chant. Such a Skald/Mage Slayer is really good at taking out enemies who use abilities a lot. I did a one-on-one with Broodmothers and Skulking Terror and so on and they couldn't get off their abilities. Quite nice in a party I guess. But yeah: that has nothing to do with weapon proficiency - sadly. I don't see that many synergies here. I did a test with Blunderbuss + Combusting Wounds, basically a Black Jacket/Wizard with 4 slots and 4 Blunderbuss, using Quick Switch. I was trying to cast Combusting Wounds on an enemy and then empty my blunderbusses on him to see if the 20 pellets would cause 20 instances of Combusting Wounds while the Powder Burns would hit the adjacent enemies at least 4 times for 4 parallel Combusting Wounds - but CW seems to not work at all atm. What works really well are all sorts of combos with rod's blast. Blast + Swift Flurry is hilarious as is blast + Driving Flight. Even combined that with a Monk/Sharpshooter and combined blast + Swift Flurry + Driving Flight. Which basically breaks the game a bit. I had to use the console to add Driving Flight though because lvl 9 is not enough to get it with a multiclass char.

The Skald and Beckoner are pretty powerful. The single class Skald gets Killers Froze Stiff pretty early and because of the reduced casting cost he can actually start with a cast of Killers and then go in and crit the heck out of everyone he's paralyzed. Also works great in multiclass with any melee class that either speeds him up (monk with Swift Strikes and Swift Flurry) or grants him melee crit conversion (Berserker, Rogue, fighter). Beckoner is the perfect body blocker. Actually it's too good I think. I didn't try the Ancient Brittle Bones with a Beckoner in the new beta version . In the first one Brittle Bones didn't work. But just imagine having 6 Skeletons on the map... They said in one of the recent vids that they will have to nerf him because he's just too good. So they probably did that.

I said that he lacks passive abilities. The problem is that the shifter has to pick certain spells because there is no other option. He's not very gimped just because he has to raise RES a bit if he wants to cast a damaging spell. Also, there is no loss of option in this case. There is oy a less min-maxing way of playing a shifter who can deal good melee damage and ALSO deal good spell damage. At least if you don't mean that min-maxing is the only option of course. I'm not even a fan of the new STAR/RES, I only think this whining about how classes like cipher and druid are gimped now is a bit exaggerated.

Or he's much more powerful than a ranger to begin with and can afford to have balanced attributes... Also, as a druid you can specialize. You don't necessarily be great with nuking AND shifting AND CC AND healing. The ranger can only do one thing with such focused attributes, and that's shooting stuff from afar. If you want a specialized melee druid you'd take a shifter and drop RES. You don't need it to deal damage and high INT and PER would be enough to make the Storm worthwhile even without a lot of spell damage. It's the disabling effect that's important here. A specialized classbuild can always drop a stat. If you want to be ok at everything then you obviously can't. Like a ranger who not only wants to shoot stuff but also wants to be great at healing his pet all the time and provide long lasting DoT-effects: he'd have to raise RES and INT. So, comparing a druid (who's supposed to be great at every druidic aspect) to a ranger who's only supposed to shoot stuff and then say "but look: the druid needs more stat points to be good at all those things" is not fair game.

Erm... Why do you need Concentration if you can't get interrupted anyways (looking at you, Courageous)?

But you can be a great shifter with 15/15 if you want decent melee damage and good self heal. Nuking isn't a good option anyways. Why do you need a shifter class that's always a no-brainer to skill with 18 STR and 3 RES? You can still do that though. But your healing will be bad while your melee damage is better. No problem if you have a healer in the party. The problem of a single class shifter is that there are not enough useful choices on level-up. That makes me want to multiclass a shifter every time. But honestly I have the same problem with most other classes atm as well... Not enough choices on level-up that match my "plans" due to the removal of universal talents/passive abilities - or not enough passive class abilities.

I agree that the grimoires function like the special lvl-0-thing. Since trinkets are out this gives them something special. Druids are not worse than other casters. The Livegiver for example is pretty great (awesome healer, needs no STR, shifting is just a tool to raise rejuvenation's power level) - while the Fury as dedicated nuking class is quite meh due to the weak shift and the overall bad state of offensive spells (although the Fury also doesn't necessarily need STR). The Shapeshifter is not really a caster and doesn't need a lot of RES but STR, but very strong nonetheless. Druids' lvl-0-thing is Spiritshift - and that's powerful as it is (except Fury), even if you only use it as your panic button once you get attacked. And 15 RES/15 STAR is totally doable and doesn't gimp a whole class - even if it has to have some RES and STAR because it needs both weapon and spell damage. I feel the worst casting class is currently the cipher. And not because the cipher has to invest into RES and STR at the same time (he doesn't if he focuses on weapon damage and CC spells) but because the spells/powers of ciphers are awfully balanced. The Ascendant is a mess, the Beguiler's is nothing special and the Soulblade, while Soul Annihilation is awesome, suffers the same problem as the other ciphers: the spells are basically crap in their current form. Priests do at least have fast healing spells and their powerful faith attuned weapons (if they manage to summon them in time)...

I agree. I'd also like the Skald to be leaned towards melee. The subclasses are there for stuff like this.

Not really bad overall - the wizard is a great candidate for multiclassing because of his very useful self buffs and a few other powerful spells. But in general single class wizards (and every other single class caster) suffer from the problem that more than 50% of their abilites (aka spells aka invocations) are trash in the current state. Sure, there are some really good ones, no doubt, but why are so many of their abilites so bad in comparison? I don't want casters to be one-trick ponies. In theory they can choose from a ton of different spells - but why should they ever pick the thrashy ones? To create a real challenge or what?

That's also the case if RES boosts spell damage an healing. A ranged weapon build doesn't need both too much. I also suggested and supported the "RES influences the durations of afflictions on you" because I think it's an elegant and easy solution. I also had an idea where more RES gives you more charges of Concentration, making it more difficult to interrupt you (making it valuable for casters as well), but I guess that's too complicated and not implemented easily. Even glass cannons might not want to dump RES when that means that afflictions might last a lot longer. In the end it's afflictions like stun, paralyze and petrified that kill your glass cannons. From melee attackers you can simply run away, at least in PoE. Also there were many people who dumped RES in PoE because they could compensate with powerful healing and concentration buffs. Now it's even worse: a melee powerhouse doesn't need RES at all once you have a priest or Livegiver in the party. Deflection is meaningless, loss of health can be healed all the time by the Livegiver and concentration is of no use for melee guys. Truly a dump stat for them now. If dumping RES would lengthen afflictions on them they would not dump it I guess. Long disables are simply annoying and bad for your dps. Really bad.

For example the club is good if you use it as a Skald who is casting Killers Froze Stiff. That invocation targets will. I can't remember now but I think that Carnage does not work with the club's modal, so no AoE will debuff.

It is working as intended. And that is: fists do get the bonus. It's not a bug and not an oversight, but working correctly. Don't mind the somewhat misleading description of Two Weapon Style. In fact you should take all descriptions concerning game mechanics with a grain of salt. The game got patched a lot and the descriptions seldomly got updated properly. Also things like Wounding "Shot" or Stunning "Shots" work in melee or Psychic Backlash says it procs 1/encounter while in-game it really procs unlimited times per encounter. Fists are considered to be "unarmed weapons". You can also see this when looking up "Weapon" Focus Peasant. Fists aka unarmed is included there as well and get +6 accuracy.

Just checked on windows, same beta build: not an issue here. I totally forgot that I still have a windows partition and thus can continue to use the beta. But the linux version seems to be completely broken atm - at least for me.

One of the best things Torchlight has is the pet that runs off and sells your trash loot, then returns with the money. Great idea, although I was asking myself how that pet communicates with the shopkeeper. My cat can't even tell me that she doesn't want to be petted, instead she has to scratch me. Don't think that shopkeepers respond to that in a very civilized manner...

Fluffle old chap! You are German? Hohe Fünf! Could have written all those past messages in German then, dammit. It wouldn't bother me a lot to see weird translations concerning ship's articles in German. But that's mainly because I play on English.

Good joke with the .exe. No, I did not yet try to start the game out of steam. Maybe I will try that next. But I don't think it's a problem that's caused by steam. But I will give it a try. I didn't change anything on my system before encountering this bug. But even if: how could it trigger the chargen screen to appear inside a game? This seems to be a problem of the Deadfire Beta, not something on my system's part. I guess it's simply the new patch. Maybe I never tried to reload a save after it came out since I was only creating chars and testing them against consoled dummies. Only when I tried to do a proper run I did run into this reloading issue - I guess. Maybe I should try to revert to the first version of the beta and see if the problem persists.

Aw man! Good that you tried that class (which nobody likes to play atm because it's so bad).

They really should watch out for consistent benefits of empower for all abilities/spells. At the moment some profit immensely while others don't get anything out of it.

Still in the soulbound factory. They can't automate the animancy process yet and have to assemble the soulbindinding parts by hand. But the boss, Ethon Beaver, promised they are close.