Boeroer

I don't know what you did with the latest patch, but this way I can't play the Deadfire beta anymore. I simply can't load savegames without the char editor opening with every reload and messing up my main char. I uninstalled and reinstalled Deadfire, uninstalled and reinstalled Steam, even upgraded to Ubuntu 17.10: all to no avail. This beta is over for me until you put out another patch I think. Sad but true. And it seems that it's only me who has this problem. Weird...

I PoE one of the most interesting ranged characters is a bow cipher (if you don't like rangers). Other alternatives are a ranged rogue (more weapon damage than the cipher but no spells and literally no crowd control options), a wizard with implements (wand, scepter or rod) + Blast Talent and also a monk who focuses on the Long Pain (lvl 7). But a bow cipher has it all: nice weapon damage, good crowd control, not too squishy.

Erm... before this patch it went like so: fire main hand - fire offhand - reload

That's why most gun ciphers use Island Aumaua + Arms Bearer + Quick Switch nowadays.

Yes, Deathblows and Deep Wounds also work with spell from scrolls. THe source of the spell doesn't matter at all. Just keep in mindthat Deep WOPunds only triggers on spells that do either pierce, slash or crush damage. So, for example Concussive Missiles is a great scroll to use or Twin Stones. Both are also foe-only which is good. You don't want to cast a Maelstrom+Deathblows onto your party members. Other spells that trigger Deep Wounds are Overbearing Wave (there's one version that's 1/encounter and foe-only and that's from the Swaddling Sheet which procs when you catch a crit - and another 1/rest version on the White Crest Armor), MindLance (amulet) and so on. There are a lot of spel binding items. You can decide which ones you like best. I like Sun-Touched Mail and Amulet of SUmmer SOlstice best because they give you 6 Sunbeams per rest and Sunbeam also blinds in an AoE for a pretty long time - which is neat for a rogue. I once did a scroll based rogue build which might contain further information on rogue+spells: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/86156-class-build-the-sorcerers-apprentice-twisted-sneaky-dps-scroll-user/ The spell-binding-rogue is quite fun and also works like a normal rogue (if you use dual sabres for example) when all spells got cast. So it's no problem to run out of spells, you can still keep on hitting with your weapons to great effect. A melee wizard, especially with Citzal's Spirit Lance, using Alacrity + Citzal's Martial Power, is very powerful. Also Infuse with Vital Essence can help you to not lose too much health while endurance can be healed with Veteran's Recovery and Concelhaut's Draining spells. Stats can be fairly balanced. I like to drop RES a bit, but the rest of the attributes can be useful. For the unarmed monkish wizard you want to have maxed MIG (so, 21 would be great) and can do with lower DEX because of dual wielding.

Ha! I found out how I can circumvent this issue: when I open the console and type CloseAllUIWindows that chargen window closes and I can start playing without ruining my character. So what's triggering this weird bug? Some visibility or layer-order issue? Edit: No - forget it. All my abilites and spells are lost then... BUMMER!

Does it need to be a blunderbuss? Because you are more independent in the choice of your targets if you use an arquebus. And you can get one very early from Kana Rua. With a blunderbuss you can only deal decent damage to soft targets while an arquebus rips through almost any armor and generates focus. You also don't need Penetrating Shot which is a must when using a blunderbuss. The cooler uniques are with the blunderbusses though.

Every pub of the base game except the Wailing Banshee in Ondra's Gift. So no pubs in the white march.

The really good ones are Acuan Giamas and Daybreak. The first is on the Llengrath map and the second you'll find after jumping into the pit, which is a really cruel joke for every morning star user. Others are Mabec's Morning Star which has stun on crit but also has that stupid wilder slaying enchantment. And the Rose of Salthollow looks really nice but only has a corrosive lash and draining. Which is not bad, but nothing special either. As MaxQuest said, there's always a better alternative in form of a great sword. Acuan Giamas is very good (probably the best weapon in the game as soon as you meet kith casters) if you know how to use it properly, but it comes too late to have a lot of impact. So yeah, pretty bad weapon choice unfortunately. There are other weapons that have the same problem: maces for example. Somebody at OBS doesn't like crushing weapons.

Then they should have inserted those items into the beta in order to get proper feedback on casters. At the moment they get a crapstorm - although a mostly constructive one. and as Gromnir pointed out some time ago, if you wanna analogize to self buff, then you should accept reduced durations. casting time and durations is all part how such spells is balanced. the summoned weapons, with durations equivalent to other self buffs, will sudden become far less useful in the more challenging encounters of the game. HA! Good Fun! No. Because the universal self buff would give you +15 ACC for everything - while the +15 on the weapon is only useful if you attack with said weapon. But if shorter durations are required to make the summoneing process faster then so be it. Somebody who wants to focus on summoned weapons can call forth one and the same weapon twice per encounter - or just use a summoned weapon from another spell level. I'd rather have a fast cast with a shorter duration than a long cast with a long duration.

The game gets balanced around classic mode. So it's a good approach to make casters enjoyable in classic mode I'd say. In classic mode most fights end before you can even dish out two 6-secs spells+recovery (not counting the ones from stealth). And even if they are not completely done - most of the time most enemies died or are near death so that a big and meaty AoE nuke would just be total overkill. Chanters in PoE were good in PoTD but most players who only tried them on normal were disappointed by their slowness when it came to invocations. I wouldn't want to repeat that mistake with superlong casting times. There are spells where I'd say that a bit longer casting times make sense. Especially those which always seemed to bee too powerful for their spell level. But those should be exceptions.

If you want to retain as much "character" as possible when trasitioning to Deadfire I would look at the actual Backer Beta of Deadfire and which builds are currently good. Then I would try to mimic somthing like that in PoE. Currently the following things are working really good: - multiclassing a melee guy with a wizard in order o get the really good self buffs and also Citzal's Spirit Lance (Paladin/Wizard, Berserker/Wizard, Devoted/Wizard, Unbroken/Wizard, Monk/Wizard and so on) - multiclassing a ranged guy with a wizard in order to use Kalakoth's Minor Blights + special abilites (like monk's Lighting Strikes or Paladin's Flames of Devotion for example) - multiclassing a ranger with a monk in order to combine Swift Flurry + Long Pain + Driving Flight (flying fists all over the place) - Sharpshooter/Helwalker with dual scepter + modal (wounds all the time and crazy ranged damage) - Priest/Paladin or Priest/Monk for using the sumoned weapon of the priest with Flames of Devotion or Lightning Strikes(+110% lash damage) - Paladin/Monk for using Lightning Strikes + Flames of Devotion - Druid/Paladin or Druid/Monk for using Wildstrike + Lightning Strikes or Flames of Devotion - Assassin/Soulblade: kill an enemy with a great sword out of stealth, get a ton of focus and kill the next enemy with Soul Annihilation: two enemies dead in the first 3 secs of combat. - Assassin/Evoker: cast a damaging spell out of stealth and get assassination damage for the spell (+200% damage and bonus penetration) - Skald/melee class that raises crit chance, dual wielding. Chanters are very powerful per se in Deadfire atm and the Skald gets phrases when he crits in melee. He also pays less phrases for offensive invocations. This allows him to spam things like Killers Froze Stiff or Hel-Hyraf (very powerful in Deadfire) all the time. - Ranger/Beckoner: having 1 pet and being able to summon 6 skeletons (that scale with level!) is very powerful. You are having your own army and won't get touched at all. and many more... The most powerful of those combos in PoE would be a ranged monk who uses the Long Pain mainly. There is a build in the list (Witch Doctor) which evolves around the Long Pain. One could alter it to get a more "rangerish" vibe. Another thing would be to play a melee wizard with good CON and Veteran's Recovery and aim for Citzal's Spirit Lance, using Concelhaut's Staff in the meantime and making heavy use of self buffs mainly. This is also a quite fun and powerful apporach in PoE. A melee chanter, dual wielding and with good self healing (Veteran's Recovery + Ancient Memory + Beloved Spirits) who focuses on short phrases in order to fire Killers Froze Stiff and Seven Nights a lot would also be good. This could mimic the Skald combo. A rogue with all spell binding gear he can get (Sun-Touched Mail, Amulet of Summer Solstice, Flames of Fair Rhian, Bittercut, Animancer's Boots and so on - spells work with Deathblows and crit conversion - spells which do pierce/slash or crush damage even trigger Deep Wounds) to mimic the Assassin/Evoker. This is also quite powerful in PoE. A rogue with Backstab, Cape of the Master Mystic, unlocked Nightshroud and Feign Death, using Tidefall as main backstab weapon and putting on Munacra Arret, Ring of Changing Heart and Spirit Spiral to mimic the cipher (Soulblade) part OR a cipher with Firebrand, using as many damge bonuses against flanked enemies as he can get (Apprentices Sneak 15% + item like Glanfathan Stakling Boots +10 and survival 12 or even 16 + 2 from item in order to get +20% or even +30% damage). This can mimic the assassin part because you can get up to +55% against flanked targets and that's massive with Firebrand. With Phantom Foes you can constantly trigger flanked on enemies. I also once played a melee unarmed wizard with Novice's Suffering and maxed MIG and heavy use of self buffs, especially Citzal's Martial Power. I tried to mainly use touch based spells (Grimore Slam, Jolting Touch and so on) in order to mimic "special attacks" of a monk. It worked quite well and was a lot of fun. That's because Novice's Suffering works really well with high MIG but totally sucks with crits and damage bonuses. A wizard won't have plenty of the last two ones, so it's perfect. Also, grazes with Novice's Suffering do almost the same damage as with crits. So the low melee ACC of the wizard is no problem at all. But it's easy to get high MIG with a wizard once you get Martial Power. In Deadfire you can easily multiclass a wizard with a monk and make use of the great self buffs of the wizard and combine that with the good survivability and melee damage of the monk. Maybe here the "drunken master" thing would be fun where you take a Nalpasca Monk and a wizard. That are my initial thoughts...

So, this one case where a fireball is good (when cast out of stealth which basically circumvents long casting times) justifies the current state of spells? Or what was the point of bringing up that example? The previous example on the other hand illustrates pretty well what the current problem with a lot of spells is. When will the designers realize that their approach of "long casting time vs. interrupts" deteriorates the combat experience? So either severely buff the spell effects (which still makes aiming and waiting a chore, but at least you get something out of it) or lower the casting times. It felt totally ok in PoE, why did they throw that aboard? Just because of that one idea that longer casting + interrupts make for a better tactical experience? Well that seems to go flooey. Please! Return to the casting times of PoE1 or even better adopt the stuff MaxQuest posted. You can still do that tactical approach if you intersperse some slow but POWERFUL spells where interrupting would be a wise thing to do. But they don't need to have 9(!!!COME ON!!!) seconds of casting time. If you want to be a spell interruptor you might want to have good timing and wait with your long recovery attacks until you see a caster doing his magic and only then attack to interrupt. Or choose weapons/abilities with short recovery so that you can react more quickly. No need to open a time window so big that even a mammoth/slugwalker can interrupt twice during casting times. This gives more tactical depth (since you seem to be into that). But even if there are spells that take 9 seconds to cast: please make them actually do something powerful. 9 seconds to call a summon or to pull some people together for some shirt timespan...? People where complaining about Chanters because they had to wait for ages until they could get off an invocation. How is this any different? You can now summon help when you accumulated enough phrases or/AND the abysmal casting time is over - which is basically 5 seconds after combat ended (watch out, exaggerating here).

The White Spire is one of the most pretty weapons in the game in my opinion. And Disorienting + 3 Blizzards/rest is a pretty decent enchantment if you have decent INT and MIG. Great swords usually get favored because of the two damage types and more importantly: because they have two very good uniques, and that's Tidefall (highest potential dps of all two handers) and Hours of St. Rumbalt (beautiful combo of CC and damage on crit) which can both be obtained pretty early. Another thought: does the Weapon Focus stacking also work with the Long Pain, Kalakoth's Minor Blights or Rot Skulls?

I could swear the Skulking Terror is german though...

Tehehe, thanks a lot Jojobobo!

I also have the feeling it's like that since yesterday. I didn't see any update process with steam.

Yes, I would. The Mad Hornet was used to shoot at several enemies to make good use of the long Deep Wounds (high INT = more damage in total) and the high Envenomed Strikes, emulating AoE damage which the rogue doesn't do normally. But woundig dps (from Persistence) suffers a bit if you have high INT (the mechanics of woundig are a bit odd because the damage itself doesn't change with INT but just gets applied in a shorter or longer timespan. So shorter time means more damage per second). That's not so important if you shoot one enemy after another and let them "bleed out", but it's a little disadvantage if you focus on taking down single enemies. With Prestidigitator's Missiles I would focus more on single target damage and here low INT with Persistence would be better. Luckily, missile spells don't care about INT at all (except Concussive Missiles). Also Deep Wounds don't suffer that much because they get reapplied with every shot (they don't stack like wounding does). So I would actually dump INT and skip Envenomed Strikes and max out MIG (boosts wounding damage), DEX and PER. The rest as you like. I'd still use Deep Wounds though. It's good with high MIG if you focus on one enemy - even with low INT. I'd make sure that other party members deliver afflictions for me since my own strikes+afflictions won't last that long. You could think about getting a crossbow/firearm and use it for the first shot out of stealth. If you do that I'd also pick Runner's Wounding Shot. It is very powerful and has similar mechanics as woundig on Persistence but is only 1/encounter, so it's best used with a hard hitting weapon. You could open up with a Sneak-Attack-imbued Runner's Wounding Shot from an arquebus or crossbow (aim for Twin Sting as it works with Weapon Focus Peasant),then switch to the bow and use the missiles as soon as you see that a target has two afflictions (triggering Deathblows). Sneak Attack + heavy hitter + crit + Runner's Wounding Shot can one-shot casters right at the start of the Battle. If not, the missiles can finish them off. By the way: Distant Advantage (wood elf racial) also works with Prest. Missiles and such.

Just restarted the computer, made a new char, leveled all companions to lvl 6, went in to the village, talked to Vektor, bought some stuff (did not use the console or whatever) and saved. When I try to reload the same issue as reported above occurs. I can't play the beta at all - only if I'd do a playthrough without saveing/reloading. Does anybody else experience this bug?

Hi! With the new Backer Beta (v0.0.0.0021 Backer Beta Release 2.0886 BB -steam on Linux) I have the following problem: Whenever I save the game (I'm still in the starting village) and reload, the character editor opens and I'm forced to reroll my main char again. Only the name is that of my previsously rolled char, the rest is gone. Once I finish this forces char creation the savegame loads and I'm exactly where I saved last time - but with a new main char who replaced the old one. This only occured after the new patch was released. Before that I never encountered this problem. What's this? My savegame (happens with all current savegames by the way): https://www.dropbox.com/s/sb7se0p7t319rfi/Ryngrah%20%28Tikawara%29%20%28216cb64b-1f17-498a-95fa-ed5f5d744bd7%29%20%28754588918%29.savegame?dl=1 My output log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yn6d2vez9v7veme/Player.log?dl=1 System specs: Ubuntu 17.04 64 Bit RAM: 32 GB CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz × 8 GPU: GeForce GTX 1080/PCIe/SSE2 (driver version 318.22)

Hi. Persistence is a great pick for a bow rogue. I'd even say it's the best pick. Prestidigitator's Missiles is a good pick as well although it doesn't work with Sneak Attack. BUT: it works with the hit-to-crit conversion of rogues, it works with Penetrating Shot and it profits a lot from the rogue's high accuracy. It also has an inherent ACC bonus and gets +1 ACC per char level which leads to a lot of crits. It also works with Deathblows which doubles its damage. Together with crit bonus and Merciless Hand, Dungeon Delver and for example Azalin's Helmet you can get +100% damage on a crit. A crit with Deathblows then means +200% dmaage with Prestidigitator's Missiles and it's once per Encounter. This makes it useful even in the late game. It's a great caster killer. Also the range is fantastic and it's a very fast cast. You need good DR bypass though. I would not open with it (because the stealth/sneak attack bonus will not apply to it) but instead use a Crippling or Blinding Strike from stealth and then follow up with the missiles to ensure even more crits. This also works well with any other missile spell, be it from items (cloak) or from scrolls. Try Missile Barrage with Deathblows - it's devastating. Or try Concussive Missiles with Deathblows + Deep Wounds. AoE raw damage included.

No, you have to kill with Steadfast to proc it.

Just checked with v. 3.7: no enchanting for soulbounds. I didn't install the beta patch 3.8 and don't intend to. Can somebody confirm v. 3.8 beta? This would be a serious bug.

Usually soulbounds can't be enchanted. The recent patch notes didn't say anything about a change in that regard either.

To test this you have to roll a Wizard/Soulblade. Since you can't level higher than lvl 9 and thus won't get to the Sprit Lance yet you have to add the weapon manually via console with "giveitem". I think this is a pretty nasty thing since it shows that Citzal's Spirit Lance is implemented in a way that it's prone to game-breaking effects whenever it comes to abilities with on-hit or on-crit effects like Soul Annihilation, Lightning Strikes, Swift Flurry and so on. The same might be true for Kalakoth's Minor Blights. It doesn't work with Soul Annihilation obviously but does have weird effects like with Swift Flurry and Driving Flight (as I and several others already reported). I guess it's the same implementation of the AoE effect as with the Lance.