PangaeaACDC

Is this the "play on stage" quest? Pretty sure I didn't fight any people during it, but maybe things could have gone that way in the bar. Sounds a little off, though, based on what you write. Would probably say the same about the Katrenn bounty. Seems like these gradings are based on the main NPC, but if nasty mobs join the fight with 3 skulls and such, well... not quite representative any more. Awesome fight though!

"His room's is a mess." --> "His room is a mess" (or the the short one ofc, but not both)

Yesterday I fought a ship combat where the AI ship ended up taking three different events: flooding, deck fire and unsecured cargo. The ship was supposed to have 6 crew members, which can be seen just before the ship got engulfed in fire in one of the screenshots. However, at some point they also had 3+4 members dealing with two of the special events. Even if I assume the "arrow out" on the deckhand isn't showing due to the crew being injured, I'm counting 9 crew members. 7 dealing with special events,1 resting/healing, and 1 surgeon. Something isn't right with this. Either crew members are getting cloned, or there is something weird with the graphics/crew representations. 3 of the crew members dealing with the special events are marked as injured, which ofc fits with the 3 extra/cloned members. But judging by the speed of improvements between turns (the progress bar), they helped out. Please take an extra look at the code here, because something isn't quite right.

They are visible on the actual ship. They are the small flags you see if moving the camera while the ship is docked in Neketaka, or if you move the camera up towards the sails somewhere while walking around on the ship deck. Don't have a screenshot of it handy, but on the Dhow for instance, they are on a rope from the front of the ship and diagonally towards a mast. Nothing appears to change if you are in the ship UI and hit the toggle, though. Same as the ship name really.

Pretty tough fight, so I tried most in my arsenal, including the Ectopsychic Echo wave from my main character Cipher. Didn't do much really, but after the fight I noticed the wave was still going, between the now dead target and my cipher. You can see it in the screenshots. Saved and reloaded to see if it was still there, and as expected it wasn't. Attaching the save too, but don't know if you can tell much from it, seeing as it didn't reproduce when I loaded it myself. Not sure why it's going between an enemy and myself, but it must have been the ecto. echo that caused this. Tried a similar trick with Aloth, using Ray of Fire, but that did very little seeing as these chums were immune to fire damage. After the fight some normal citizen NPCs walked through the wave without getting damaged, for what it's worth. Savegame: https://we.tl/4zR6yXR8IX (only lasts a week, from 20 May)

If you shoot out their sails, then board you get decent xp and more loot. You definitely get more loot boarding though Also, a Dhow with full speed upgrades will be in boarding range after 2-4 full sails. That's my goto at this point, ship combat does nothing for more me after the first playthrough. If you want proof, my first playthrough I sank Bounty - Biakara and missed out on this item, which did not drop: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Lance_of_the_Midwood_Stag In a subsequent playthrough I boarded that bounty and looted the unique pike. I have that Pike and have done ship-to-ship combat for all ships so far except one early game, so must have got that from loot while sinking the ship. Can see you would get more weapons and armour loot from boarding, but maybe less food and such items? At some point I'm sure people will do a side-by-side comparison. But you do get more XP and levels from sinking them, which is quite handy too. The loot is really a non-factor though, so people should do what they prefer. I happen to prefer the ship-to-ship combat, and I see others prefer boarding. It's great that both options are viable. I haven't boarded a merchant ship so not sure what loot you get then, but I've sunk quite a few, and you get heaps upon heaps of cannonballs, medical supplies and the like. 40-50 cannonballs is not rare. Doesn't cost a lot either ofc, but it's nice to get them for 'free'. Just wish they didn't overflow, causing me to lose so many.

Thankfully they are aware of the problem. For some reason when boarding happens, both injured and healthy versions of the enemy crew spawns. That's why you see some dead/injured people laying about, but still face a full crew. Would think this bug is pretty far up on their to-do list.

Something weird with the spacing here. The second quotation mark is on a new line for some reason. Fits best in this thread I think.

1 Major and 2 Moderate gains with Huana, and still no change from the +2 I already had. Looks like this is messed up now

Depends what you want I suppose. The Dhow is faster, so it's easier to manoeuvre in combat if something special happens, like the enemy trying to escape. Largely this isn't an issue though, so then it's down to 2-turn jibes (180-degree turn) vs 3-turns with the galleon and junk. If you want combat to be over with as quick as possible, the junk is probably the best ship, as it has 5 cannons on each side. The galleon has 4 and the dhow 3. The Galleon has the superior hull with 120-base health, while the dhow and junk is equal with 80 base health (more with upgrades). The attached picture from another thread should help greatly PS: The base hit chance for the sloop (starting ship) is 50%. This is the enemy's chance to hit you, before other modifiers like crew ranks and distance.

I get that winning with a lesser ship is more rewarding, I sank over 1/3rd of the named ships with the Sloop. But if I can win on turn 9-12 (where 7 of those turns is two holds, 1 jibe, and two round of firing), I would much rather do that than win in 20+. I think my shortest win in the Sloop was against a Voyager and it still took 15-16 turns, and three of them were not auto turns from a jibe. Slow movement on the Junk? It is actually just slightly slower than the Dhow, with good upgrades you won't even be able to tell the difference. The 3 turn jibe doesn't matter, because you win on cannon fire #2 instead of 4-5. It's not really about speed for me, because I genuinely like the ship combat, going through the turns and adapting depending on what happens. Great fun to see random events on the enemy ship and being able to take down superior ships. For instance yesterday I sunk a 135 hull-health ship without being in real danger myself with the Dhow. Okay, I had just bought the expensive top hull (+15 health), but still great fun. As indicated I'll probably upgrade to a galleon or junk at some point, but unless I run into something much wilder than the 2-white skull 135-huller, I'm thinking the Dhow should be enough to sink everything out there. Attached is a picture of the Stomper going down, and another where the enemy got badly hurt by random events, and never got back into it after that. My guess is that it's kind of a Crit effect, so with well over 100 chances, this will happen more frequently. (And a slight advantage with the Dhow is that the enemy has a lower hit-chance against you than if you have a Junk, 60% base vs 70% base chance).

Thanks for the confirmation; so it is as I suspected. Makes versatile people pretty useless then, ironically enough. The versatile people cost more too, at least when you recruit them + wages. Would be much better if versatile sailors could get master in both skills. That would actually make them good. I should now just give up trying to level up the 3* deckhand / 1* boatswain I have

Did faction reputations get broken with the 1.02 patch? Or perhaps the gain is too low now. Had reputation 2 with Huana, finished a quest and got Major boost with them. Still 2 afterwards.

In the release version of the game items would get red when you tried to steal them from containers and somebody were looking. In 1.02, this doesn't appear to be happening. I can fetch items from right underneath people's noses and it's not red, and there is no nasty message or consequence if I 'steal' them. See for instance the picture attached, which is from a crate right next to a merchant named Uto. (Don't mind the odd bottom bar, sometimes screenshots get borked for some reason, I don't know why, but it has happened in other games too, though usually I get the desktop coming through)

Good luck. There is at least one ship I have encountered in game that can easily land hits outside it's optimum range, and can do very high damage per salvo. You will be unlikely to beat it with a sloop, I don't care how good your crew is or what upgrades you have. You can ram it, but it's crew is also level 15, so I hope you are pretty darn far in the game. Yes the sloop played right, with a good crew, good upgrades, and good guns, can beat "most" ship encounters. That said, you will take a long time per fight doing it that way, assuming you even win every time, you might not because there are a small amount of legit nasty ships out there. Meanwhile I sit on my junk, close to 400 give or take, fire two salvos, and i win. No I don't care what the other ship is, two salvo's I win. I won ship battles against Galleons with upgraded hulls in 135 hp in less than 2 minutes. Ask the guy with two imperial long guns per side how long his ship battles take? Yes it costs a lot to get the ship, and all the upgrades, but trust me, it makes ship combat insanely faster. Also, what else are you spending it on? Yes, there are cool items in a lot of shops, but most of them aren't as good as what you can loot, or you can also loot them somewhere else. Additionally, farther you get in the game easier it is to make money, I have cleared some dungeon maps where every mob was dropping exceptional gear and I sold the stuff for over 20k from that one dungeon only. You don't find it kind of boring to sink any ship with 1-2 salvos? Currently I have a Dhow, and it has served me well. Takes a bit longer than two salvos because we have just 3 cannons per side, but it's been a lot of fun, and sometimes you get into a sticky situation where it's somewhat close. I find that exciting. "Hope I don't hit their sails now, or they could do some serious damage on the counter afterwards". Suppose I'll still upgrade to a Junk (funny eh?) at some point, just a little concerned about the slow movement. Right now when I don't have a ton of money, think I'll prefer to upgrade equipment on the Dhow instead of buying a galleon or junk. Btw: those who have basically sank every ship out there, have you managed to get crew with two skills up to master in one or both of them? I haven't so far, and it looks like they are topping out at four 'stars' combined.

Found a program called Ravioli Game Tools, which enabled me to open, listen to, and extract .wem files. Can't know what's what though (each file name is just a long number), nor how to change them, if that is even possible. Saw in another thread that override for audio files is not possible, so perhaps we're out of luck?

Sounds like they are working on the combat from the ground up, possibly adding new enemies to make them more difficult that way.

Interesting. I forget who I spoke to first and such, but I went around a long time hoping to find some way to get all the children on board. Eventually I just gave up and finished the quest.

Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone co-directing a game together then? :D

A bit random, but I was looking through the code and found something mildly interesting. When you play Orlan's Head, Perception and Dexterity affects your 'luck'. int num = OEIRandom.DieRoll(100); if ((bool)thrower) { num += (thrower.Perception - 10) * 2; num += (thrower.Dexterity - 10) * 2; }

Is it possible to change or remove sounds? The game uses .wem files, which I can't seem to open in any software, and the filenames don't reveal anything useful. The sound I specifically want gone is the very ill-fitting howling wind that regularly occurs while in palaces, mansions, underground fortresses and the like, as mentioned here. If I knew which file this was I could delete it, hopefully without negative repercussions, or alternatively edit the file itself. Had to do that in the first game to remove that obnoxious laughing man in every tavern, but it looks more difficult in POE2. Would be great if somebody could help me out.

That's the thing, most people who never do proper ship combat won't realize it but, there is an incentive. You get better crew EXP, and better loot if you win the ship battle the "traditional" way, and do not win via boarding. I have done multiple boarding wins, the rewards always suck, even if the enemy initiates it. Meanwhile I always get a full page, sometimes almost two pages, of loot when I win by sinking them. Like I mentioned earlier, once you actually invest in the best guns, and best ship, and best upgrades, and get expert or better cannoneers ship combat is also stupidly fast to win without boarding. I would go so far as to say it might be faster than spamming 1 and fighting it out in many cases, especially if the enemy crew is high level. Definitely agree with that. Admittedly normal combat is slow for me because I turn off all AI and do everything myself, but the XP and loot is better from normal ship to ship combat, and for me at least, it's also more fun. If you for some reason are low on repair supplies, medicine and cannonballs -- just attack a merchant ship and you'll fill up. I routinely get 30-50 cannonballs and suchlike from sinking merchant ships. Which of course makes sense, because they carry lots of wares. Currently boarding also has the issue of a potentially weak main character being put on the front, and nuked by the enemy crew. Hence dying pretty darn fast. What the game needs is a better tutorial that better explains ship-to-ship combat. Yes, some will always hate it due to the zero-patience nature of people these days, but I think many can get to like it as well, when they know what's really going on and how to best use the different tactical options.

This is the no spoiler section. How about bloody respecting that!

Is it possible to remove this sound by deleting a file somewhere? It's really starting to get on my **** I'm in the basement of a fortress and the wind is howling like I'm on on the edge of a cliff or in an ancient run-down loft somewhere. It's quite ridiculous