mr_raider

Well the good news is respeccing a wizard is much less costly in deadfire than PoE1. The game is more forgiving of experimentation it seems. Ive also gotten decent mileage out of parasitic staff + spirit shield for early trash mobs. Does anyone have a link to the exact stat buffs that are applied by difficulty level? I can see on veteran that enemies are getting an armor and accuracy bonus of 6 I believe.

Just to point out, those are not beginning of game items. Don't expect them for the first 10 levels or so. Maybe even later for Cape of teh master mystic.

So what about builds that focus in combusting wounds? How is there damage output? I'm willing to try multiclass on later runs, but for a first time I was looking at a pure wizard, focused on damage or crowd control.

Is Zeblastian still alive in deadfire? Or has he gone the way of the dodo. And what exactly is this blood mage cheese you speak of?

Is a pure wizard viable as a caster still viable assuming a full party of 5.

I'm trying to transpose my two favorite PoE wizard builds to Deadfire and not having much success The first is the blast/implements/kalakoths blight wizard that eventually became the master of battlefield control. I noticed kalakoths is still on the spell list, as is combusting wounds. But the blasts feat is now a modal tied to the rod which is not impressive at all. I can still trigger CW with DoT spells like chill fig or wall of fire, but I miss the machine gun blaster punishment that the original could dish. The second was dwarf melee wizard that focused on staff and citzals spear. By the end this build was a walking wrecking crew and could melee dragons straight up will the rest of party chewed gum. From what I see concelhauts staff has much less damage going for it in Deadfire. The deflection bonus from the buffs like displaced image have been significantly nerfed. Maybe I need to multiclass to flesh out these builds? Or am I failing to properly grasp Deadfire mechanics?

Durance's quest is trivial. the rewards minimal. The game has too much XP as it is. I dump Durance as soon as I get him, take his staff, and relegate him to escort duty at Caed nua. I leave his quest unfinished.

I assume he will make liberal use of summoning figurines.

For a cipher, you can consider a two hander, because nothing punches through DR better. You will hit massive damage numbers with biting whip. Also, with time parasite, a cipher can reach 0 recovery with a two hander, something only wizards can achieve. This allows you to wear heavier armor. Two handed weapons that stand out are llawran's stick and the Blade of Endless paths, since they both offer the attack speed enchantment. A cipher with durganized armor, a speed ecnhant durgan enchanted weapon, and gauntlets of swift action can hit zero recovery. With 16 dex you will hit almost 3 times faster. Staves also have the benefit of being a reach weapon so you can stand behind a tough guy and poke at enemies with it.

Maybe my math is off but it seems damn near impossible to craft a weapon that does more damage than Concelhaut's parasitic staff. The base damage of the staff is 20-30 which means it does almost 50% more damage than any two handed weapon, before even accounting for the exceptional enchantment. A legendary enchantment breaks even on the base damage, but the problem is the parasitic staff still comes out ahead since all the damage modifiers like 2 handed or sneak atatck apply to the base damage of the weapon not the modified damage. Even Abydon's hammer fully upgraded to mythic does less damage per hit, despite the +4 to might. Maybe if I upgrade, lash and durganize llawran's stick, and achieve 0 recovery it will out-DPS the Concelhaut's staff. Obviously I'm not taking into account the accuracy bonus of legendary + weapons in this case which would improve DPS.

Eventually a bow will outdamage a crossbow, even twin sting, once it gets upgraded, durganised, etc.... Stormcaller also has excellent damage output due it being dual damage type and applying a shock dr rebuff. You can argue it's even better against high dr enemies

That looks like bollocks.

The description for mirror image is also fubared.

So why the "story time" in the log?

Is it possible the game automatically lowers the difficulty when you enter an area. I'm playing on PotD and suddenly noticed a Laguafeth get paralyzed. The only way that could happen is if Alia Braccia reflected a a dart. Sure enough the log recorded a missed dart on one character, but the it said something like: Laguafeth grazes XYZ [Story Time ->] Miss Has my game reverted to story time mode? I thought PotD was unchangeable. I also noticed the defenses were fairly low on the Laguafeth. Usually they are in the 80s or 90s.