blotter

It's from before the recent updates so it there may have been some changes since then, but here's MaxQuest's list of Afflictions and Inspirations.

The damage bonus from Transcendent Suffering still shows up under the inventory screen's unarmed damage popup from one saved game to another, at least. There's also a Haymaker modal for unarmed attacks which provides a penetration bonus at the cost of increased recovery time.

Backer captain screenshot. Edit: Also, here's something from Sawyer via a recent Reddit comment about the trailer and boarding ship combat:

With my most recent save I made promises to Hylea, Rymrgand, and Skaen before destroying the souls after all (which Skaen surprisingly didn't seem to mind in terms of the ending slides I got, despite advocating that I send the souls off to Woedica), but my prior two Watchers didn't make promises to any of the gods and finished the game just fine. I had completed all of the gods' quests in those games, though, so I can't say whether just finishing one of the quests is enough.

My guess would be that those elaborations (of questionable accuracy in some cases) were added to make the available survey choices stand out/seem more interesting. They also didn't include any of the White Marches companions in the drop-down selection for blood pool sacrifices and they only implicitly addressed the matter of broken promises to the gods by allowing us to select one of the two "pledged to multiple gods" options. As far as oversights go, I didn't see any option for Watchers who didn't pledge themselves to any of the gods (as was the case for several of my Watchers who completed the game) unless that's what the "I pledged to all the gods equally" answer is supposed to represent. Between this survey's available answers in that regard and Sawyer's posts on the same subject, I suspect that the official interpretation is that doing any of the gods' quests and subsequently receiving their assistance in surviving to reach Breith Eaman constitutes some sort of pledge to them, but that seems to conflict with the actual promises that they solicit from you and that you can decline to make. I was a little surprised that they bothered to note the distinction between sacrificing the orlan baby and giving the distilled essence potion to Simoc vs sacrificing the orlan baby and poisoning Simoc anyway, though I still suspect that the latter choice won't introduce any unique reactivity.

The fact that boarding enemy ships is an option doesn't necessarily reflect deep-seated developer insecurities about the quality of ship combat any more than the option to fly different faction's flags to fool nearby ships that might otherwise be hostile does. Both options are thematically appropriate extensions of features that have been promoted throughout the game's development to start with: faction allegiances, faction hostilities, and piracy in general (which, at least in books and movies, frequently involves actually boarding the ships you mean to plunder rather than blasting them from a distance). From the twitch footage and interviews so far, charging into a ship to board from the start isn't just a way to cleanly sidestep ship combat for a number of reasons: The enemy ship can take advantage of the time it takes you to reach it by blasting away at your ship and damage to your ship/crew that you suffer in the process can further complicate the boarding efforting along the way. In the worst case scenario, the enemy ship can apparently hit your gunpowder reserves and destroy your ship outright, though Sawyer said the frequency of this is getting tuned down The enemy ship can react defensively by moving away from you as you're moving towards them Disparities in ship features can affect effective cannon range to make boarding more dangerous. This might also extend to relative ship speeds where boarding/evasion are concerned - I'm not actually sure if ship/crew-based speed differences have been confirmed or not, but it seems likely There is a distinction between the ranking system for captains and crewmembers and their actual levels, meaning that boarding could result in trading a ship fight with an inexperienced captain/crew for a perilous melee against high-level enemies

Sawyer's been pretty active in responding to reddit comments made about the beta and the changes he's announced. I'll toss out some quotes from Sawyer here, but the link's better for getting a sense of exactly what criticisms and concerns he's responding to (this is in reference to the "Upcoming Changes to the Backer Beta" post at the top). #1 #2 #3 #4

The ambiguity surrounding that stretch goal and its promotion is one of the things that annoyed me most about the campaign; some sources definitely make it sound like the presence of sea monsters in the game depended entirely on the goal being met, but there are others that contradict this. For example: The update itself listed, with the exception of the polpovir, monsters that weren't included in the "Monsters of the Deadfire" book and it ends with the following statement: "With this stretch goal we will add fishing and new sea monsters that you may encounter while sailing on the seas around Deadfire!" Note that they said new sea monsters, which could imply that there is a range of sea monsters already in the game to expand upon (given that they already have models and animations for kraken courtesy of the White March expansions, for example, I don't see why they wouldn't throw in one or two). In Q&A 4, Sawyer confirmed that we'd be encountering sea monsters in the game, stating that they are "sort of like the thing for the Deadfire". His response didn't mention their presence being contingent on reaching a stretch goal. To be fair, though, the Sea Monsters stretch goal itself wasn't announced until the next day (edit: two days later, actually).

No. While Eder and Aloth don't use any subclasses, that's not the case for the rest of the main companions. Per an older post from Sawyer's Tumblr, Pallegina will either be a Kind Wayfarer or a member of the Frermàs mes Canc Suolias, Maia has a unique ranger subclass (Gunhawk), Serafen has access to a unique cipher subclass (Wild Mind), Xoti can be a priestess of Gaun and/or a Sister of the Reaping Moon monk, and Tekehu can be a unique subclass of chanter (Storm Speaker) and/or druid (Watershaper). Sawyer also said that two of the sidekicks have subclasses, but he doesn't go into detail and I don't recall whether this post was before or after they discarded Radora and Bonteru in favor of Fassina and Konstantin. If it was before, then the bit about sidekick subclasses could apply to sidekicks who no longer exist.

Sawyer discusses overpenetration on tumblr, stating that the damage bonus from may be changed soon, and also shares his thoughts on the varying importance of penetration bonuses under certain circumstances. He also states that Fessina/Fassina has the Conjurer subclass. Multiclassing her will also be a possibility; this isn't particularly surprising given the current approach to companion class options, but I'm still glad to see some confirmation of flexibility in options for sidekicks. An earlier update that associated single classes (or a single multiclass combination in Ydwin's case) had me wondering.

I found this old post of Sawyer's, in which he states: The official wiki's Eir Glanfath page also states that the Engwithans have been "dead or gone for two millennia", but it cites page 57 first guidebook as its source and that page of the guidebook doesn't actually mention anything about two millennia. The only specifics that page provides in terms of chronology is as follows: "[c]enturies before the Glanfathans arrived at this location, the area was ruled by a lost people called the Engwithans (...)" The guidebook also has this to say under the description of the Savannah Folk/Natlan: "There are some cultural and anthropological indications that Natlan were near the Engwithan culture at some time prior to its presumed downfall, but Natlan-dominated cultures seemingly have no records of their interaction." Tying this back to Sawyer's old post that I linked to above, he said that "[t]he Ixamitl culture is one of the oldest continuous cultures in the world, going back a little earlier than Old Vailia." 2,000 years seems more than "a little" earlier than 1,500 years to me, but the Ixamitl culture can't have been the first one to spring up in that area since the Natlan themselves have been there for over 10,000 years (again, according to the guidebook). One obvious reason for the Engwithans to poke around that area is to spread the word of the "true" gods to the people living within it, in which case they may have already abandoned Eir Glanfath by that time (edit: probably not, though, insofar as I'd expect this event to tie in with the Engwithans' "presumed downfall"). Of course, that post was back from the days of the first game's kickstarter campaign back in 2013 and it's definitely possible that some details pertaining to the timeline could have been revised since then.

Sawyer's thoughts on the goals for Deadfire's weapon proficiency system and how well they've been met so far. In regards to the current, situational approach to modals: The proficiency gain rate is also changing from 1/4 levels to 1/3 levels.

The decision of background can be acknowledged without generating a variable set of NPCs that you can interact with (and yes, to cover the different families possible, it's almost unavoidable that NPCs would have to be specifically created in various locations for the purpose of representing them rather than just repurposing those already made to fit). Players will have dialogue options tied to their backgrounds, the aristocrat background included, but beyond that, this is another blanket statement on your part that becomes questionable when subjected to detail and context. Obviously, not all decisions from the first game can or will be acknowledged even when you're dealing with rpgs, and thus it's obviously not reasonable to expect reactivity for any given choice simply because you could make it in an earlier game, let alone to expect a specific form of reactivity such as the one being discussed here. My response was primarily directed to the statement I quoted, in which you categorically claim that difficulty fails to suffice as a reason not to implement something. But as for the poster's original request, they actually didn't ask for mere acknowledgment of the background: they asked to meet their character's family in the game. That obviously requires that there be a family present to meet, and using any "NPCs in any home who meet the appropriate racial requisite" is such a sloppy and haphazard approach to implementing this that it would likely be worse than no attempt at all for many, myself included. The fact that you actually think that plopping them down wherever would be sufficient indicates that you aren't even aware of the extent to which the details of this background can vary to begin with. You can check here for details on the available choices for this background as well as others, but I'll quickly summarize some of the basic ones here as well: You can be descended from royalty. You can be from an "influential" family. Your family could have recently purchased its status and be considered pretenders to nobility by those who claim it by lineage. What makes sense in terms of the portrayed history of one and its subsequent developments in the game doesn't fit for others, and for each of these choices further variations are possible that can influence not only the tone of interactions with the family, if they were to be created, but also where it would even make sense for them to end up. The proposition of simply integrating them within locations that are already planned further assumes that such places will necessarily fit the background, and that's far from guaranteed: for example, have you heard anything about a kingdom where wood elf royalty exists in the Deadfire in any of the lore tidbits or interviews for the game? I sure haven't. For all your talk of acknowledging background decisions, the supposedly elegant solutions of having the families automatically lose power, emigrate elsewhere, or end up deposed, murdered, or otherwise deceased regardless of the player's earlier background specifications obviously contradict this goal. What's more, many of these proposed "solutions" of yours don't even accommodate the original poster's request to actually meet the Watcher's family in the first place, despite the fact that you're supposedly arguing in favor of it.

Let's bring your claim back down to earth and try applying it to this specific instance: Are you honestly saying that not mapping out all of the possible iterations of a Deadfire aristocrat's family reunion in-game will condemn this game to mediocrity? Actually, why stop there? If all the possible Deadfire noble families that could occur for each race and sub-choice available for the background need to be put in the game because the difficulty of effective implementation can't justify abandoning the effort, then by the same reasoning, they should devote time to developing ending slides, enemies/rival families, and maybe even in-game lore and equipable/consumable heirlooms to fit your Watcher's vaunted lineage. Actually, maybe we need to make unique sidekicks, companions, and/or crew-members available to Watchers of the background as well to truly shoot for greatness here. Difficulty in implementation quite often translates to increased demands of time and other resources, and as those are limited, it's obvious that prospective features will be in competition with each other when considering what can actually make it into the game. Creating npcs to accommodate this specific background is likely to be minimal enough in its returns to the subset of players who will demand them that I'd expect it to be pretty low on the list of prioritized features even before considering alternative uses for the same amount of time and money. Making a great game isn't simply a matter of being willing to expend effort; knowing when and where to do so is just as important. That said, even if they had time/money to spare on this, there are still reasons not to. For one thing, doing so could cause players to resent the disparity in the amount of reactivity associated with this background as opposed to others or to feel like this region and background combination is the only one "worth" choosing. For another, the resulting characters and locations may be of questionable quality if the primary reason for their creation is simply to check them off a list of possible encounters tied to the background.

Sawyer elaborated on barrel diversity and other objects with combat significance in the game:

Yes, priests most likely had powers before the creation of the gods. The Xaurips are an example of this, given their worship of dragons rather than gods and the fact that their priests are still able to cast spells. Even with faith alone being sufficient for priestly magic regardless of what one has faith in, there are a number of factors that could certainly facilitate widespread conversion to the gods that the Engwithans created: Engwithan-made gods can directly communicate with their followers. Priests of less "real" gods may believe that they are receiving messages from the deities that they worship as well, but the phenomenon is likely to be both less widespread and consistent in terms of interpretations and responses given the idiosyncrasies of the priests involved. Engwithan-made gods are capable of exerting demonstrable influence over the world through the use of their powers beyond what individual priests are capable of. Ondra dropping a meteor on Eora is one example and there are plenty other ones that can turn up in the ending slides if the Watcher breaks their promise to a god. Engwithan-made gods are able to create/unleash agents of their own in addition to gathering mortals for this purpose. The Eyeless are one example of this, and they're basically able to wipe out nations if the Watcher's conversation with Ondra in the White March is anything to go by. The Engwithans were (and still are) unmatched in their mastery of animancy, something they could both attribute to the gods and utilize to achieve greater military power. In the first case, people are enticed to convert in order to grasp the secrets of animancy (or what scraps the Engwithans deign to share, at least) while in the second case, it works as Diogenes described: systematic slaughter of heathens with a bit of soul destruction/imprisonment on the side to drive the point home. Thaos and the Leaden Key have been active through the centuries to subvert faiths and institutions that are deemed an affront to the "true" gods. Besides that, this is a polytheistic world. It isn't necessary for all other deities to be branded 'fake' to begin with: it would be sufficient in many cases for these gods that don't exist outside of kith imagination to be branded inferior or subordinate to the Engwithan-made gods, and it isn't hard to see how this could be accomplished given what the Engwithan gods are capable of. In other cases, the Engwithan gods might take on the names of gods that were already worshiped within various cultures and adjust the faiths in question to better suit their purposes over time.

As is noted in the Pillars 1 class description for priests, their powers come from their faith rather than being bestowed upon them by a god. And yes, this would seem to suggest that a godless priest would be possible as long as they have faith in something else. A wizard's magic is produced through specific interactions and techniques, as well as external foci such as their grimoires (though they still tap into the power of their souls to activate these foci). A wizard's power doesn't depend on faith or dogma and understanding of the various applications of arcane magic is expanded via experimentation. As a system of magic, it's more objective and scientific in its approach - making magic flow through a grimoire in the right (or wrong) way will produce a specific result regardless of whether or not the wizard behind it believes that this result will occur. See update #74 from Pillars 1 for details. It gets murkier when trying to distinguish between a hypothetical godless priest whose faith is tied to nature itself and a druid (conceptually speaking, at least). The link I provided above states that druids harness their power through animistic principles, basically tapping into forces which link living souls together (which is starting to sound a bit like ciphers, but whatever). This sounds like precisely the sort of thing that could serve as a focus for faith in place of a deity, but I guess what separates a priest with such a belief system from a druid is that the latter doesn't actually have to worship nature; they could simply exploit natural forces through their understanding of them. An animistic priest such as the one I described would probably end up being represented in game terms as a druid/priest (or "universalist"), though, and at the end of the day, it's likely that there aren't intended to be clear, immutable boundaries separating one type of class from another. The representation of class combinations by singular titles in Deadfire is one point in favor of this view and then there's the fact that Sawyer apparently isn't planning to use classes at all for the pen & paper system.

There's a combat speed slider in the works. Also, if you were wondering how the big head versions of Eder, Pallegina, Tekehu, Serafen, and Sawyer's pale Elf Watcher looked in the inventory screen, then today's your lucky day.

There isn't a problem with enemies having immunity to specific damage types in the abstract. In practice, there may be if there are a preponderance of enemies who are immune to one damage type, such as piercing, rather than others since it makes some weapons superior or inferior to others overall. A devoted encountering enemies who are resistant or immune to the damage type from their chosen weapon is something I'm completely fine with, though, and I agree with CottonWolf that a) these situations are precisely where the drawbacks of the devoted subclass are supposed to lie and b) the devoted has options available to them even in these situations. I also agree with AndreaColombo that the downside is easily avoided by selecting proficiency in the use of weapons that have dual damage types such as swords or warhammers. Similarly, players may select weapons with single damage types which they know from previous playthroughs aren't widely resisted or subject to immunity (assuming that there are significant disparities in the occurrence of immunity to specific damage types). These methods may actually allow the devoted to avoid the downsides of their subclass a bit too easily by removing the incentive to ever switch weapons, unless Obsidian is careful about overall encounter balance throughout the game and/or makes sure the enchantments for less optimal weapon types are appealing enough to still provide a sense of cost or lost opportunity for canny devoted players.

Here's a peek at an elastic Serafen and Xoti's lantern idle.

Good to know, though depending on the player's choice of race/subrace, that alone may allow a character to cover varying levels of defense against four out of six affliction types. Throw in a class ability that grants an appropriate Inspiration as well, and that's five out six affliction types that you have defenses for. Weaker defenses than resistance equivalents overall, and there may be situations where the downsides of the alternatives make the difference between life and death for one or more characters during a fight, but it might be enough for players to gamble on pretty effectively. As for how highly they'll value resistance as a feature on equippable items and how dramatic this will make the tradeoffs for using items that grant them vs other items, you could be right; equipment may well end up being the least desirable way to shore up these defenses precisely because of the items they keep you from being able to use. It's also possible that Suppress Affliction will never have a scroll version, which could leave serious gaps in scroll-based defenses against afflictions. We'll have to see. Interesting that potions do provide some options here after all, but even setting aside the prospect of nerfing, those two seem like they'd be pretty advanced items. Crafting expenses and/or scarcity of required resources may prevent potions like this from being made or used too frequently. Did you find anything for potions of recovery? They were something else that came to mind from Pillars 1 that seem relevant to the subject of resistances vs consumables and affliction management in general.

You're right about potions as far as I can tell for my brief trip back to Vektor's shop and since drugs are affected by the same skill, I suspect you're right about them as well. I'm not sure how it'll work for scrolls in the end - they don't seem to differ all that much from the spells they're based on from what I've seen, and I remember reading somewhere that they weren't actually scaling based on Arcana, but they could exclude inspiration spells from having scroll equivalents. Potions and drugs could still cover for tier 1 afflictions somewhat by offsetting their penalties without eliminating the afflictions themselves, but by tier 2 that won't really cut it, I agree. If it turns out that there are no scrolls that dole out inspirations then that drastically cuts down on the options available to step in for those talents. Pillars 1 had a bunch of "Prayer Against _" type scrolls though, so we might see something similar for Deadfire. Sure. I said as much twice in my last post. My point still isn't that resistance talents are useless or redundant. There are obvious advantages to having them, but the same way that having them can free up slots and resources, not having them and depending on less effective but still useful options may be desirable as a way to free up points for other abilities that players may want more. If an ability is frequently passed over for other choices, that suggests to me, again, that it's not a top-tier ability.

I'm not sure this is directed at me since I never said that high level passives aren't powerful, but the part about resistances and countering afflictions seems to suggest that it is so I'll respond under that assumption. About resistances, I was addressing whether they make multiclass characters overpowered at low levels. They don't, since these characters don't even gain access to them until level 10 in most cases. Further, questioning whether resistance passives belong at the top of a list of passives, as would be suggested by a statement such as "the really good passives", isn't equivalent to saying that I think that they aren't powerful at all. These passives are certainly more reliable than countering afflictions with inspirations and they free up resources that would otherwise have to be spent dealing with afflictions. And yeah, I doubt it is all that easy to counter all possible afflictions through ability/spell selection alone. But the methods to deal with afflictions don't necessarily end there: scrolls/Arcana may help, as may potions and equipment. For example, the beta allows us access to some bracers that grant Dexterity resistance, if memory serves. Resistance passives are more effortless, again freeing up resources/slots, and more long-term for sure, but given the number of alternatives available even at this point in the beta, let alone later on in the game, I definitely question whether these abilities are top-tier.

Multiclass characters can't even get class-based passives that provide resistances until level 10 at the earliest (barring console hijinks) in most cases since they don't become available until power level 4. One Dozen Stood Against the Power of a Saint is a notable exception, though, since it's power level 2 and thus available to multi-class characters at level 4 rather than 10. I'd also question the inclusion of resistance abilities among the "really good passives": one of the main advantages of resistances would seem to be that they prevent a character from ever suffering from a tier 3 affliction tied to the attribute they have resistance for, but on the other hand, inspirations of any tier can counter afflictions of any tier and vice versa (e.g., a tier 1 Resolve inspiration can cancel out a tier 3 Resolve affliction) so they're comparatively easy to block or remove anyway. +1 engagement doesn't seem particularly impressive to me either compared to class passives like Sneak Attack/Backstab, Soul Whip/Biting Whip, or Faith and Devotion, which are amenable to adjustment based on power level. Perhaps another way to ensure meaningful advantages based on power level is to reduce ability resource costs when the user's power level is high enough above the power level of the ability being used. For example, Into the Fray could cost 1 Discipline rather than 2 when a fighter's power level is 4; a single class fighter would have that benefit three levels before a multiclass one would, and as this applies to abilities with higher power levels, the single level character would eventually gain access to ability usage cost reductions that multiclass characters never would (or would only at the highest levels). Something different would have to be worked out for druids, priests, and wizards, of course.

That's an Interesting coincidence. I haven't tried it with the console yet, but I hope the creature gets gibbed for bonus points.