Wormerine

I am on my 3rd playthrough right now, I feel Deadfire is this kind of game whch gets better and better with every playthrough. Not that you are wrong - I think your observations are spot on. But the more I play the more I appreciate what Deadfire does right. I would have agreed with you on that after my first playthrough, but not anymore. I do think game doesn't tie up everything well, though. The story line isn't clearly divided into Gods and Factions storylines. Faction quest directly bleed into Eothas' storyline, though in a very subtle way. Pretty much every major quest has some ties to the Wheel, Ukaizo, Engwith, history, Eothas philosophy and actions. It's actually quite brilliant. I don't think the issue lies in pre-endgame content. I really believe all of this is really strong. I don't see any of that as an issue but the opposite: it's a pretty great design - you have self-contained story, were your choices matter, and not a small scale. You interact with world powers fighitng for control over Deadfire, you can support/oppose their ideas, in the process discover who your character is and define him/her, and make impactful choices, which will have lasting impact on Deadfire and your companions. At the same time you have a cosmic conflic, which is above your competence. It allows to create a smooth continuation for the series, while still allowing you to make an impact on it - as a matter of fact your choice of how you direct Eothas have a lot in common with how you can resolve the conflict in Deadfire. I think it would be cooler if Eothas actions at the end were informed by your choices during the faction quests - quite a bit like Ciri in Witcher 3 has different ending depending on your dealings with her and lessons you thought her. I think that was a quite new and natural way of introducing "A, B, C" endings. It all makes sense and it is all good. On paper. My main issue with the story of Deadfire is that the finale is quite unsatisfying: 1) I don't think it properly pays off all the faction quests. Ship combat battle before heading to Ukaizo and a pitiful encounter on Ukaizo in "nemesis leader" is not enough. 2) Optional final boss fights, which has little to do with your character or story, other than being an obstacle on the way doesn't make for thrilling fight (if you happen to have it) 3) The whole Wheel thing, it's implications and consequences are not properly explored in the game, and especially in the finale. After replaying game multiple times and reading Josh posts I made my piece with it, and I think I know what's going on, but I do think the ending needed something to tie it up. In other words I think what the game needed is a longer ending dungeon, in which we would explore a bit more of Ukaizo: "dungeon" were we learn more about the Wheel with reactivity to knowledge we have already gathered from all the quests on the way - for one to acknowledge players who did all the side content and to bring their attention to those moments. A nice moment to tie all those things together. Pay off the factions. I think it is unfortunate that we really don't get to feel the wrath of an enemy faction. With a companion or companions abandoning us in most cases how cool would it be to go against them in a more substantial way. It would be also nice to interact with our new allies and get a taste of what they are like when they set foot on Ukaizo. Ha! I know that I am describing is highly reactive content matching in length Forgotten Sanctum DLC (at least!). I really feel this game could use a space were all those big decisions and moment throughout the loose, open world experience get tied together, acknowledged and paid off.

God's don't inhabit physical bodies in "here" anymore. One, as we can see with Eothas, even god's light touch can be destructive. What is more important is that physical body can be killed, and that's a risk gods aren't willing to take. For the majority of time they don't realise what Eothas' intension is. If they knew earlier maybe they would scrambleto find a better way of opposing him. As it is, God's tend to use mortal agents to do their biding. Woedica used Thaos, now Berath uses Watcher. Eothas isn't residing in the Beyond at this point - he is mortal and is soul(s) reside within the statue. Can he contact gods or vice versa? I don't think they can summon him as they do Watcher - your visits to the beyond are clearly tied to the essence (the bell) Berath implanted in you. I don't know of the way in which the gods could force him to talk to them. He certainly doesn't want to talk to them, as he knows they would oppose his plans. He only reveals them to you when he is certain that nothing can stop hit at this point. I do think it is odd that god's can't track eothas by themselves, as you so it via adra pillars - something gods should have access to, no? The story isn't about Watcher, that's for certain. I see it as the reflection of PoE1 story - but this time it is Eothas which decides to reveal the truth instead of hiding it, and just like with Thaos there is nothing really you can do about it but save yourself. Your opinion matters because you are a human Eothas has contact with (?). Your perspective is important, because after all Eothas does what he does for humanity.

I am wrapping the quest. Actually, I don't think Anaharu is really the cause of the storms. While he claims it to be so, some of the dialogue suggests it is the Engwithian machinery which causes it and the recent souls (Anaharu and Valians) are only the most recent addition to the prison who didn't "rot" as of yet. The question is: What was this place built for? We know Huana were sacrificed to fill Adra with essence. Is the system here broken, or was it an early test for what became the storm inducing machine in Ukaizo?

Something has been bothering me about "The Storms of Poko Kohara" for some time. I ignored it during the beta, and didn't give it much though as I was blazing through it once the game released due to over exposure, but replaying now I see a fairly glaring plothole. When nearing the end of the quest we learn that the Storms are caused by Anaharu, who after loosing (and dying?) doing the Trial of the Waves corrupted the adra pillar via which he was to travel to In-Between. The condensation of essence created unnatural storm around the island and Anaharu hoped that this will keep foreign powers away from Tikiwara. However, the rest of the narrative doesn't seem to align the death of Anaharu with the apperance of storms. We knew that the Trial of the Waves happened sometime during the visit of Valian explorers - Vektor mentions seeing Anaharu and Tikiwara chief leaving the village late at night and only chief returning. At the same time, the chief doesn't speak of storms as it is a new phenomenon - mentions they never sail near Poko Kohara for a reason etc. This journal also fits: Storms should begin during the Valian visit or even after they have left. I would expect something more alligned with: Valians went there are unleashed something unnatural.

Just a reactive RPG is what I am looking for.

Even better - during my previous boarding I didnt even seem my crew! (idle sidekicks and companions: yes).

I didn't touch any of the major AAA releases in a while. Speaking of Mass Effect I am still pissed I can't pick up Mass Effect2 DLCs like a a normal person through steam. I sort of want to give it another playthrough, but everytime I try to figure out how to buy DLC I get really annoyed. Between worrying about microtransaction and lootboxes interfering with my enjoyment of the game and the exploitative pricing even if something looks promising there is just too much for me to break through. I am worried though - those games clearly sell. Either this madhouse will collapse, or it will be rarer and rarer to see... well, games.

If Deadfire didn't have so many shallow systems and insane bugs I'd agree with you. Imagine a game like Mass Effect 2 being released and the import completely not working and the final boss becoming invisible and unfightable. Chill out, the game still hasn't come out from early access I am even warming up toward the romances in my recent playthrough, when companions don't try to bed me a minute after being recruited. So far only one of them triggered and am deep into the game and have been conciosuly workign toward it... to the point of abusing infinite rep gain with Xoti to trigger it earlier. Clean up the bugs, and hopefuly patch ship2ship combat (please, let this new UI thing be an indication of things to come) and we are in a pretty darn good place now.

What are immediate stuns? At least in my current party available interupts and stuns from chanter and cipher, both which take resources which are more likely than not to be available and are pretty expensive (aka. won't be able to cast something more useful for the next couple turns). My main source of ranged interupt is ranger or Thrust of Tattered Veils scrolls. Having an immediate, reliable melee interupt for one discipline is something I find quite desirable. Ok, prone should apply flanked.

Not 100% sure, but I don't think you get that option if you enter the area from Old Town. I think it only triggers from Delver's Row. So going that route will prevent you from being able to talk to her. If so, then that certainly wasn't the case at launch.

I have done the same on my first playthrough, though I don’t recall having issues. I think I talked to the leader of the Undercroft (Mad Morena) and continued a quest line I already had which required me to talk to her.

A 50% debuff to defence stats would be insane. A debuff would certainly make sense but I am more in favour of gameplay, rather than adherence to “but-in-real-life” (though the tighter the mechanics and theme are tied together, the better. If theming is a problem I would rather rename an ability, rather than gameplay). As it is now, knockdown is a very useful 1st level ability. There are a debuff which makes enemies skip turn (stun and stronger) but they are usually higher level abilities that consume more resource/can be easier to dodge and have a chance to being interrupted. As it is now, knockdown is a reliable and cheap source of interupt and disabling an engagement. Someone keeping your squishy in check? Run up with fighter, knock his ass down, and move your squishy to safety. Doesn’t knockdown consume the movement points when getting up? I thought that that’s how it works, though with little information regarding enemy movement I might have misunderstood. As it is I think the ability is fine. If buffed, only a minor buff or raise the ability cost/move it up the skill tree (not actually recommended).

Yeah, so far custom AI hasn’t been translated to turn-based. The AI that exists for friendly NPCs (like during ship combat) has some issues right now: continually skipping turn and I believe they don’t use abilities at thier disposal. It certainly something that needs a look.

Blame backers for wanting so many sabres :-D

There is a new project that is being worked on: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/107090-new-new-obsidian-game-what-is-it/ According to gamespot the lead programer was pulled of Outer Worlds to go and work on that project. What this project is we will have to wait and see. Did Microsoft acquisition finalise enough to make it first official project under them? If yes, then even if it is a Eora project I think he will see some changes. Maybe the addition of turn-based mode for Deadfire was something to test and prepare for PoE3? Something that would allow for multiplayer and smoother console release? Or maybe it’s a completely new project? New IP? RPG in Microsoft owned IP? If it’s a bigger project we might have to wait longer.

For the most part Steward is pretty much irrelevant, except for the quest which kicks of Seeker, Slayer, Survivor. However, if I remember well Steward starts conversation with you, which means it might works just fine - I can't interact with her either, but her "tutorial" when boarding the ship for the first time works just fine. Seeker, Slayer, Survivor won't start until you finish the mission in Ashen Maw, so you pretty much have majority of the game you can do before tackling that one.

To the excellent list of suggestion I would like to add my own concern - so far this is the biggest issue I have with current iteration of the turn based gameplay: I feel that Dexterity and Inteligence don't really make for useful stats. It is possible that currect obfuscation of how those stats interact with individual skills (I still don't quite understand how initiative works and why would I care about it, except for spellcasting and tooltips for how many turns spells last still show information in real-time terms (duration in seconds). Inteligence's effect of AoE spells is useful as always, but the duration is unclear. Even if high/low inteligence can influence spell's duration by a turn those points are really extreme. I have characters with varied inteligence spread and I can't say I see any difference when it comes to spell duration. Similarly, Dexterity's boost to Initiative seems like a very nieche benefit. I cant' say I see a big advantage to moving before enemies as they do a poor job disabling my team. Even further, having a higher initative gives better chanes to interupt enemies as if they cast after my characters move, they tend to finish casting before the next turn begins. I must say, I don't really have a suggestions that would help fix those issues. Some ideas has been thrown around the forums which like liked - Dexterity influencing how many attacks can be done with a weapon ala. D&D 2nd edition, or moving away from strick one turn for everyone systen, in favour of initiative based turn order (character with higher initiative take turns more often), but I don't know how feasible those are to implement design and engine wise, nor if they would break more than they would fix. In addition current attack system really disfavours weapons which benefit was shorter recovery time, as it is lost in turn-based system.

I found one more way to infinitely gain reputation with a companion. After completing Xoti's vision quest, and convincing her to release gathered souls into a luminous adra pillar Watcher can ask Xoti how her is she sleeping now. Her answer is positive and she states she will remember who helped her (minor reputation gain). This conversation can be repeated indefinitely. Save: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nS_v6m3fwSgg9mBPsb03__fQQEW9miJm/view?usp=sharing

Nothing is impossible.

It's still called fortepian in Polish. The table-like instrument at any rate.It does those in English it’s simply called piano, or Grand Piano (to distinguish from compact square piano). As it is usually the case history of the instrument is long and complicated and I am not versed well enough in it to provide any meaningful information. I just remember during my education in Poland term “pianoforte” was used to describe an older type of piano, while in US I usually heard “fortepiano”. Whenever it was conscious reference to specific models, or different general term used to describe the same thing I do know know. All I do know, is that piano we have today is a fairly late invention and a big chunk of music traditionally performed on a grand piano wasn’t written with characteristics of that instrument in mind. There are some really interesting things coming out, in terms of phrasing and colour of the sound, when such piece is performed on an instrument which more faithfully conveys the original intent. This look about right, though I do not have knowledge necessary to review the information:

I have this happning as well. The debuff is active even though Re-Hand isn't currently equipped: It doesn't work the other way around - the buff only works when used with Red-Hand... however, when testing I noticed another oddity - Red-Hand get a buff from Cutthroad Cosmo which I equipped at the start of the game, even though I didn't use Cosmo for a while now and Red-Hand and Cosmo didn't even see each other (didn't use both at the same time). save: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Lu2JJB3MZ3o-_0UL4GIony7ZxUHWEOpr/view?usp=sharing

I didn't create a monk (Poor Xoti - pure priest once again) for that very reason. I also noticed enemy monks being far less effective. Two hits with fists with the same frequency as everyone else just isn't very frightening. On the similar note - I got my hands on the Red Hand yesterday: you know, the best arquebus in the game, due to allowing to fire twice before reloading. In turn based it amounts to: nothing really. One gets super good initiative for the second shot (which playing as ranger/wizard can be used to do some really effective casting) but other then that doesn't provide much advantage over other weapons. It's good in a way, as I might finally use something different, but various weapons/items/skills which were boosting recovery just aren't appealing in turn-basd.

I don't see misses to occur that often. The thing is: PoE combat is about rolls, hits and misses. The difficulty of encounters is figuring out how to best avoid damage and how to effectively disable enemies. Analysing stats is gameplay. Not that I would oppose an RPG designed differently - things like Invisible Inc. or Into the Breach make for excellent turn based games while providing reliable results. But entire system of PoE would be broken if hits were guaranteed - make attacks more likely to hit, and the main aspect of decision making is gone. However, I do think that fights can go one forever if one lands in the spot of fighting with wrong equipement or just makes wrong decisions. Just yesterday, I was making my way through the Old city and on my first attempt on the "ambush" encounter I found it a slog. I also lost. For a second attempt I switched my equippemend and things went much more smoothly - in terms of success and in how many hits enemies would die. EDIT: I feel maybe a bit of HP could be cut from both my party and enemies. It might not work as I would hope, but Pallegina herself is able to talk turns worth of damage. Similarly some of the boss fights (fought grub yesterday) comes down to waiting for HP to end. It is an issue the RTwP suffered from as well, but its much more noticable when player confirms each attack manually.

Gorecci street is one of the hardest encounters in the game on PotD if attempted before leaving the Isle - the powercreep doesn't kick in at this point yet. I didn't try it in Turn-Based but I never managed to beat it before recruiting Aloth and finding animancers. As above I do feel Turn-Based to be easier than RTwP as it's easier to play efficiently.

Violinist in an orchestra.