Silvaren

It's based on category - weapon/offhand are separated from armor in terms of quality scaling. So one weapon and one armor. It will be your best quality but +0/3. If you for example upgraded a weapon or offhand to superb, +3/3 every unique weapon and offhand you'll find will be superb, +0/3.

This music wasn't included in OST and I couldn't find it on youtube, so I recorded it in game and uploaded to youtube. I hope no one minds.

Gold Box series were this type of games. Player explored an area in FPP like in blobbers and when the combat was initiated it took place in isometric point of view and an arena was always representation of corridors and rooms in which combat started. Currently some indie games try to do something opposite. Isometric exploration and FPP combat: I saw some cyberpunk game with more free movement in isometric camera angle and switch to FPS combat when encountered by an enemy. I don't remember title but it had some pixelart retro vibe.

I couldn't resist.

You can craft it when you upgrade an item to +3/3 level and by that you hit the treshold for possible upgrade to new quality tier. For example you upgraded common weapon to fine weapon, improved it further with +1, +2, +3 upgrade and now you need awakened adra for exceptional upgrade. Then you can craft awakened adra for this improved quality upgrade even if you didn't find awakened adra or salvage any of higher tier unique (excellent as tier "III") item. You wont be able to craft awakened adra as long as this weapon is Fine +2/3 or lower quality. In my current run I managed to upgrade my unique weapon to excellent (III) in Dawnshore without exploiting this system with common template weapon which doesn't require adra to upgrade. Now I have superb weapon and armor halfway through Emerald Stairs.

Yes. I wasn't sure how to unlock higher tier Adra and then when I hit breaking point between fine/excellent I was able to make awakened adra.

Charge deals explosive damage, so maybe this is the reason to shatter foes. Try grenades or wand's AoE Bast with heavy attack, Grimoire's Snap, Spirit Lance AoE Blast attacks or rank 2 Freezing Pillar.

About motion sickness - this can be adjusted in game options: FOV, camera behavior in terms of shake and sway, but I guess you tried it. I saw few paterns in enchantments. Some are using combo mechanics, like the fire dagger in Dawnshore, iirc after every 3 hits it deals fire damage in AoE. I found similar Axe in Emerald Stairs, but it was bursting poison damage. Different combo bonus has two handed sword from Dawnshore which triggers attack speed boost (15% with upgrade to 25% attack speed) - I'm using it currently until I will go to Emerald Stairs and pick stun + bleed accumulation 2h sword. There are some weapons against certain group of foes. Pre-final area of the game take some time to complete and contains huge amount of interesting unique items for endgame. Accumulation mechanic is probably one of the most important feature in the game. I think I didn't utilize it enough playing as caster mage. I used Minoletta's Conduit (lighning wand) and it could accumulate shock on enemies, immobilizing them and bursting lightning arround them, damaging nearby creatures and electrifying water. There is Kalakoth's freezing wand too. This type of enchantment, the one that utilize accumulation mechanic can be very good and probably everyone underestimates it right now. It has potential not only to boost damage but put some CC on foes. There are great gimmicks among enchantments, like arquebus with ricocheting bullets. Some armors are pretty interesting, like Stelgaer's Pride triggering Barbaric Shout if player is hit for more than 30% max HP. I found xaurip's gloves dealing some additional damage as fire and generating more stun with unarmed attacks. Unarmed combat is probably valuable choice, at least until endgame (there is no way to enchant unarmed strike to legendary iirc). I found 4 or 5 items with summoning skills during my first playthrough. I found some item which grants me active ability similar to dragon's breath of fire. I would say there is cool stuff hidden in game. I would prefer wider options, more alternative choices on gear, like in Deadfire. Right now we have two features on unique items and one of these features can be improved.

I verified that without metagaming it's still possible to upgrade unique weapon to excellent and unique armor to fine even before dealing with rebels. I didn't take scavenger perk until late phase of Dawnshore. There is enough adra and unique items in Dawnshore to make excellent uniqe weapon. I was confused before by the trigger which allows to craft awakened adra. It looks like you don't need to salvage excellent unique nor find awakened adra in the Emerald Stairs to do this. There is no option to craft it until you upgrade any unique item to level Fine 3/3. Reaching the treshold to higher tier with unique upgrade unlocks option to craft higher tier adra.

It seems like it's better to focus on upgrading single item (preferably weapon in most cases) just to avoid penalty while fighting enemies at higher tiers and upgrade the rest just to keep up with stats.

I did a PotD speedrun about 5h long just for test how far can I go in dawnshore doing this and I must say - I didn't do Ralga bounty yet, but I did all quests and I cleared nearly entire map and my results are excellent 1/3 wand. Still 3 unique items left, but non of them give branches. Maybe a wand is a bad choice for this gimmick. There is more metal weapons in first area and only one unique pistol and 2 shields. I think even with metal weapon I would be still missing some herbs for upgrade even if I could buy common weapons to salvage them. Edit: Also I think Scavenger 1 perk doesn't do anything. I never salvaged more than 1 material from any item I broke. I picked double herbs from time to time, but I'm sure in my current "normal" PotD playthrough I did the same without this perk. Scavenger 2 is no brainer, it works for sure.

Acounting grimoire for spell efficiency is weird since you can learn spells and casts it without any grimoire in hand. I used it mostly for lowering essence cost of spells, reducing cooldowns and to preserve some skill point because learned spells are treated as being 1 lvl higher while casted with grimoire. Since I focused mostly on cackling bolt, returning storm, blizzard, fireball and freezing pillar I used regular Grimoire of Greater Elements and at the end game I just bought superb version of it. Unique grimoires can be upgraded to legendary, but they didn't fit to my preferred spell list. I didn't feel underpowered in the endgame. I would say I felt that my spells are more powerful than wand while facing higher tier enemies in Dawnshore. I managed to kill most bounties before level 5 (first playthrough on normal, now I'm playing on PotD). In final push I dealt about 2800 damage with freezing pillar.

For me it seems to be designed by adapting some of PoE mechanics. In PoE1 we have armors with fixed damage treshold. It scales badly in late game. In PoE2 we have percentage damage reduction which scale much better through entire game. In Avowed we have combination of both systems. And I see how Deadfire's penetration vs armor rating mechanic is similar to correlation between tiers of equipment and tiers of enemies in Avowed. The difference between penetration and armor scale the damage done, the difference between enwoy's weapon and his enemies armor scales the damage done and vice versa. Armor in PoE1/Deadfire is slowing character, the time between consecutive actions is longer because of that. In Avowed armor lowers enwoy's stamina/essence, so enwoy become tired much quickly, making the pause between consecutive series of attacks longer. I'm not sure about single aspect of upgrade system. I didn't utilize materials conversion until halfway through Shatterscarp and then I managed to instantly upgrade Minoletta's Conduit to legendary (V). Before that I missed the fact that I can exchange lower grade materials for higher tiers. I don't remember how I was able to do it though, what triggered option for making better adra? I obtained adra ban in the world in Shatterscarp? Now in my second playthrough I'm unable to craft awakened adra in Dawnshore, so I guess I need to buy exceptional weapon in Emerald Stairs or find awakened adra there to be able to craft this material or cheese with upgrading non-unique weapon to a higher tier.

Polish localisation is terrible. It isn't consistent with PoE series localisation. Some names of historical events are different. There is different translation for the same stuff (like Caedmen's ring in Dawntreader quest has different name in inventory and different in dialogue when you can give it back to Ofryc). There is lots of wrong declination for names like original english Magran (Av) instead of Magrana (PoE) which indicates that god of war is a male for example. On the other hand, in both PoE Ryngrim was translated as Ryngrim so I was sure it's a man, but now it looks like she's a women and old declination used in polish version of both games was wrong. There are some phrases in Avowed like reference to one popular polish commedy film and the phrase itself is "zrobić (komuś z dupy) jesień średniowiecza" which originally was a reference to Johan Huizinga's "The Waning of the Middle Ages". It was used in a film in specific context (dealing with someone with very ultimate way). Now one NPC outside governor's manor in Fior mes Iverno is talking about "middle ages"... in Eora. I remember one banter in the camp when someone compared Giatta to a cipher, but it was translated in a way pointing that Giatta likes riddles, because cipher in polish PoE was translated as "enigmatyk" which means something like "mysterious", but tranlsation in Avowed took "cipher" literally and put it in a context about liking riddles. There are huge mistakes in many documents and other lore pieces, where some part of text look like it was translated in wrong context, some of these texts look like they were translated via AI tools. I noticed there were only 3 people in polish localisation QA (many more in different languages) and every polish reviewer is pointing out this stuff.