Wormerine

Ascendent is a cipher subclass - if you are below max focus your abilitites get -2 power level. When you resch max, for a limited time they cost nothing, until focus resets to 0. So you wanna not cast spells until you reach max focus, then cast time parasite and go ape with high level cipher spells. OPAF

Agree about the difficulty.

Class/combat/quest/ship design is miles ahead of the 1st game. All the controversial decisions payed off. Looking forward to replaying it in a more polished and balanced state.

Smarter AI and better equipped enemy ships would be welcome too. It’s too easy to “stunlock” enemies into shuffling crew and brace for impact withn one successful salve.

Really? The only food I bought was from those super cheap farms you find around the world. All the rest of the food you find when exploring. By the end of the game I was traveling with over 1000 food and water in consumption space with over 700fruit in storage. A fully manned gallon costed me under 50 gold per day, which is low. While the cost of ships might seem like much early on, once you collect higher loot, it’s a non issue. I upgraded everyweapon I wanted to highest level and was still left with over 400000 gold. And galleon was the first purchase I did.

I interpreted as a more covert thing: 1) the first initial Watchers comment is not a flattery, but mention of Queens cipher talk, during first meeting. 2) queen publicly responds to the “flattery” but responds in your head - trading companies can’t spy in your head, making it the safest way to communicate.

Turns out that gods didn’t reach the stretch goal either.

At least they gave PC an option to admit he has no idea what’s going on when talking to gods.

1) Armor - in PoE1 it is easier to miss when you are making ineffective attacks if you don’t pay attention to combat log. Armor provides a flat number reduction from every attack - for example an armor against crush damage 14 will reduce every attack which does crush damage by 14. It’s impossible to completely negate damage and weapons will always do a certain minimal damage (can’t remember the exact number). As the result, it is more efficient to use heavy hitting, slow weapons against enemies with high Armor as the damage will get reduced only once. Dual wielding dagger might do more DPS, but damage will get reduced with every hit. 2) druids and priests get access to all spells, and wizards can edit grimpioies giving them access to all spells as well. Overall, while there is no multiclassing in the game, the flexible passive system allows you to create a multiclass-like character. 3) many abilities (and especially spellcasters) use per-rest abilities. Spend to many abilities in one fight and you will have to rest. Rest consumes “camping supplies” of which you can carry a limited amount. 4) food is not used for resting - it’s consumables which you can use outside of combat to prebuff. 5) PoE1 uses health/endurance system. Endurance works like health in Deadfire - it regenerates outside of combat and of your character runs out of it, it will get knocked out gaining an injury. Injuries give penalties, however, they don’t kill your character. Health is reflected by a vertical green bar by character’s portrait, and it represent a long term well being of your characters. Unlike endurance it doesn’t regenerate and can be regained by resting only. Every character has much more health than endurance (how much depends on class and con). When character gets damaged it’s applied to both health and endurance. When a character runs out of health he or she will die (or be maimed first and then die, when knocked out for the 2nd time). This acts as a resource for melee classes, who mostly rely on per-encounter abilities. 6) most classes don’t have a per encounter resource but rather certain abilities can be used certain amount of time per-encounter or per-rest, 7) interrupt and concentration is a passive check, which take place whenever an attack connects. Chance to interrupt is determined by perception and concentration by resolve. Just like accuracy, but stats get compared and roll is made based on it. Successful interupts will increase recovery, slowing down enemy attack speed. abilities and spells tend to have a very short cast time. 9) you have 6 man party. These are the core mechanical differences I can think of.

They merged my thread with yours and they used my title. https://youtu.be/vhEOInyNr54?t=1m33s

Yes, you were kept alive by Berath's "bell". Without your soul (or majority of your soul) you would be dead. Therefore you have to chase Eothas no matter if you care or not, and you are linked to Berath - as you see throughout the game she can summon your soul at will. As you are is some way a godlike she could posses/absorb you at will. Eothas removes that link, cutting Berath's access to you. The whole thing feels buried under political scene of Deadfire. As far as not being in control: I found ending of PoE1 very effective and I was looking forward to see how will Watcher use this new found knowledge. I was hoping to look for other God's birthplaces, possibly try to kill them, or reveal their true nature to kith. Eothas actions in Deadfire killed this dilemma to me. Decision if Gods should be revealed was made by someone else - it make sense for the frenchise perspective but to me it makes the game's narrative and overall Watcher's arch much much weaker. Idealy, Deadifre's journey would continue themes of the PoE1 and allow you to make decision if world should have/know about Gods. However, if that was the case, we would ended up with multiple completely different realities. If PoE3 comes out, the state it is in, is pretty much the same, no matter what ending you got. While I can understand that decision, Deadfire narrative feels week as the result. There are multiple explanations throughout the game, as to why Gods can't stop Eothas. Most of all, they dropped physical bodies a while ago. Their influence over nature isn't big enough to kill Eothas' body (as you witness in Magran's Teeth). However, overall it does make gods look inept and the whole game is a journey after the guy who does his thing, and whom you can't stop. You can influence him because.... you are special for some unexplained reason.

They merged my thread with yours and they used my title.

I think the decision came from wanting to keep the feeling of exploration, while not wasting resources on prerendered locations with no content to them. Bg1 and PoE1 have lots of prerendered maps with little content in them. Most of wilderness areas lack meaningful content beyond couple bushes to loot, some trashmobs and maybe a single nod of a larger quest. They used the world map to export loot to over world map, and those key encounters (be it bounties or such) are made in instances. I would hope that the world map allowed for more content per cost than a handful of prerendered wilderness maps. However, I still saw many complaints about the lack of prerendered large wilderness maps. WM still remains to me as the best PoE content to be had. It might be an advantage of smaller scope story.

Sounds like majority wilderness PoE areas. The thing is, those are not zones. Do don’t get loading screen to participate in scripted interaction or pick up resources. On the other hand, having a whole map with nothing interesting to do and couple trash fights in PoE1 was dull.

I agree, though due to how easy it was to inflate reputation with character prior to 1.2 Xoti made a very very bad 1st impression. I did like were she ended up with. Issues with the rep system seemed to have wrecked the pacing. Some tweaking might make it work - not allowing romance banter to start immediately after you turned someone down for example. Gears behind this system tend to move really rapidly and it breaks the spell - done couple things Xoti liked, bam! Romance conversation. Turned her down bam! Romance banter with Eder. Coupe hard coded limitation (wait x amount of days before initiating conversation) might move it a long way.

I finished my first Deadfire playthrough (Veteran, crit path upscaled) and wanted to share some of my thoughts. Overall, I enjoyed the game a lot. I liked the variety of locations, quest types and level designs. The first Pillars felt a bit “under-designed” to me – a lot of great ideas, but with rather predictable gameplay loop and limited interaction. It had clear combat/dialogue/scripted interaction structure. Deadfire’s design is much more sophisticated, with different mechanics intertwining and complementing each other. It felt as if I was coming up with a solution to a problem, rather than following one of the few paths laid out before me (though obviously they were all pre-designed). Items I really loved the variety of weapons, and their unique enchantments. I often found myself struggling to choose what my characters will be using, and the wide range of them should allow for some funky builds and strategies. I am looking forward to replaying Deadfire and using weapons I didn’t get to use. Combat I do like the changes made to the system – cast per rest, cast time, interrupts, inspirations/afflictions. I think that the system has a lot of potential. However, the low difficulty of the game forbids those mechanics from shining. Most of the time I would worry about nothing else than enemy defenses and armor rating. Enemies did negligible damage (and I used plain clothing to medium armor). I would barely use protective spells and healed in prolonged boss fights only. The little danger from enemy spells meant that worrying about interrupting them just wasn’t worth it. I am not talking about a min-maxed party rolling over enemies (I used all single class characters), but the difficulty should be high enough, so player has to engage with game systems. I disabled all AI scripts, as I prefer to micromanage and I found out that most fights would end quickly enough just by using autoattack. 3 out of 4 epic monster fights were beat with a minimal use of skills, and no protective/debuff/healing spells. Game lacks in both regular and high challenge. Unfortunately, I worry that a fine balance might be difficult to achieve. While entertaining, some subclasses might need a closer look. My PC was an ascendant cipher, and I found their subclass’ benefit to be insanely powerful. Being able to chain high level abilities without restrain was too powerful. Perhaps a discount on spell use, instead of the cost of 0 would be preferable? Current system, combined with high level ability that increases AOE with stored focus meant stunlocking/damaging entire screen of enemies at once for majority of fights. Open-world/Ship combat I feel those were – sufficient. I don’t think that that those systems are enjoyable by themselves, but I they did a great job in reinforcing the theme of the game. Most ship-to-ship combat revolved around constantly moving for evasion and shooting when ready. I tried to experiment with various cannons on different sides of my ship, but it just wasn’t worth it. As soon as things get damaged, AI seems to panic, and get “stunlocked” by moving crew around, bracing for impact and, overall, doing nothing of importance. World map lost its appeal quite quickly, with its static ship movement, lack of ambushes and plentiful supplies. I really wish that the world map would be more systemic – with faction ships recognizing your allegiance, and chances to get ambushed. In the end it’s more of a menu, rather than a board of a game. Still, nicely enhances the theme. Companions Not terribly in love with any of them this time around. It might get better with future patches, but I feel that the relationship system breaks more, than it builds. PoE1 design allowed for clear arcs and well paced character development. If relationship system’s role was to make things feel more natural then right now it does the complete opposite. Companions seem erratic, sometimes getting upset or falling in love over very little (was too far into the game to comment if patch 1.2 fixed much). While PoE1 felt like people who went on the journey with my character and grew with him, here I still struggle to identify, who they really are. The commitment to writing more “interjected” dialogue is commendable, and I imagine lots of effort went into it, however, just like relationship system, I am not sure if it was the best way of doing it. It worked well in Baldur’s Gate, but in here I feel the world is too low-key for it to really work. I need to have a deeper, direct conversation with those folks to know who they are – unlike Minsc I am not sure what motivates some of them – and small comments aren’t enough. It’s especially jarring as romances are in, and I am not sure how I could ever try to ship my PC with anyone with so little interaction and knowledge about them. Narrative and returning PC This is probably my biggest disappointment. Not that the narrative is bad per say. Factions are interesting, and the world and political scene of Deadfire has a lot of nuance – clearly, a lot of thought and care went into it. However, PoE1, in spite of its pacing and flaws, was a focused game with clear goal and story to tell. Deadfire, feels more like an adventure and the main plot feels like a MacGuffin, an excuse to explore rather than game’s main goal. It doesn’t make the narrative bad or unenjoyable, but with the low-key nature of PoE’s world I don’t think that it really works. PoE1 was a slog at times, but the destination made the journey worth it. In Deadfire journey is the destination, and while it fares much better than its predecessor, in the end it feels hollow. I feel, however, that the story suffers the most because of the decision to continue Watcher’s story. I am thinking on my 60 or 70 hours with the game, and I really don’t feel like the Watcher should have been the playable character. His unique abilities aren’t crucial to the story, and are used sparingly. His previous encountered with Gods and knowledge he acquired during the events of PoE1 are hardly of any importance. A game where we start as a new PC in Deadfire, and are given a reason to care about, before witnessing Eothas attack, might have been a more natural narrative. All the necessary information could be relayed by Eothas or returning companions (or imported Watcher himself!) throughout the game, making it more approachable to newer players. The game spends a lot of time referring to previous game, yet very little comes out of it. Deadfire doesn’t feel like a direct continuation of Watcher’s story and its themes. Any other character would do, and might require less introduction/explaining.

Of course! I was curious of anything changed (not much). I couldn't beat the game without trying to 100% it!

Sided with aprincipi, even reach Uakizo and yet still no achievement.

It worked before 1.2. Just tried it with both high explosive person and no explosive person. Both worked just fine.

There is no logical reason not to show too high level areas when scaling up only. It’s not ideological limitation, but a technical one. The difficulty indicator is static and responds to your level only. To have it work with scaling it would require to add functionality to it to recognise what level is being scaled or disable indicators showing “below your level”. Hopefully, it will be patched in the future.

There is a stock of fine firearms in Brass Citadell. Dunnage has some neat stuff as well.

Thanks!

In the NW corner of the Deadfire map there is a Fampyr infested isle, with a scripted shrine event with a pretty high survival check. if you succedd (you can come back there later in the game an redo it if need be - it doesn't disappear) you find Waterlogged Journal with the following content: I can't figure out 1st location, but second one if fairly obvious: Arkemyr Manor. I went to see the old chap and to my suprise he had a special conversation option: I found the book before (obviously) and here is its content: However, no other ideas. Scanning through locations trying to figure out first one, mentioned in the Journal. Any ideas?

I am not sure if you can sell it, but no, there is no fleet mechanic. You will want to move your crew to the ship you are currently using.

Intended penalty moving through power levels slower (it take longer to access higher level abilitites) and not being able to reach final two power levels.