Wormerine

Maybe we can convince Serafen to shave during the campaign?

Materials are tricky to come by, but basic crafting seems to work just as it did in PoE1. I was looking forward to seeing what new unique items upgrades are all about, however: On top of that, I wasn't able to add "fine" quality to any of the base weapons - only ugrade a "fine" weapon to an "exeptional".

While I am at it - could we get a more detailed look at each of crewmembers stats? Reading their CV from small pop-up tooltips is a bit uncomfortable.

I found some dodgy things with ship to ship combat. I am sure some of them are bugs, but some of them I just want to ask about: 1) Half sail and full sail movement is the same According to a tooltip, half sale should provide half of the speed and smaller defensive bonus - however, they are pretty much the same. While in this example halfsail is indeed a bit weaker, it is not always a case. I often moved 50m on fullsail, while moving 60 on halfsail. I am not sure how movement is calculated, but the tooltips make no sense whatsoever. Anyway, in current build fullsail is simply useless. 2) parallel movement not... well... moving This is more of a question, than persay bug report. If we face enemy ship with our port/starboard side and move - shouldn't we "sail around" an enemy ship and change his position in regards to us? We can move toward&away from enemy, but there doesn't seem to be a way to move around an enemy. Right now if enemy is about to shoot us, there is no way to move out of his way. As ship2ship cmbt. seems to revolve around moving in and out of range of our enemy, wouldn't it make sense to be able to move out of line of fire? Shouldn't, at the least, full sail allow us to do it? 3) does showing enemy our stern/bow do anything? It seems that unless we are commited to boarding an enemy ship or running away, there is no benefit to showing enemy ship our thinner, more difficult to hit side. Shouldn't ship be harder to hit from bow/stern sides? As we are able to move 180 degrees in one move, there seem to be little benefit to using front/back of the ship in combat. 4) destroyed sails disable full sail only Which is probably intentional, but as full sail is useless anyway, it doesn't do much. 5) immortal crewmen While not tested it personally, it was reported that that crewman injured in ship2ship combat fight just fine during boarding. Shouldn't they be disabled - possibly allowing us to thinout more populated ships before boarding? Also, after boarding report said some of my crewmembers were killed. However, back in the world map's ship management they are still fine and completely uninjured.

Finished beta, defeated all three ships. There is a new scripted interaction in south-west corner of a map. Strongly recommend checking it out! Some really promising stuff in there. Here are my impression: It's not actually all that bad, and might be fun. While there are no different ammo types, there are different cannon. Most of the ships in BB are equipped round cannons, but one of them had chain shot - doing more damage to sails than hull. I imagine there will be anti-crew cannons as well. With enough cannon types, with varied damage, range and reload, it might be fairly fun minigame. However, an automated "flee" and "board" commands would be welcome. There are some aspects I am not sure about - movement seems buggy. There is half sail, which you can use twice per turn and full sale, which you can use once. Full sale is supposed to provide full combat speed and high defencive bonus, while half sale provide half of speed and small bonus. The gameplay seems to revolve around moving around cannon range, and tyring to outmonouver enemy (preferebly using forward movement before he shoots). I feel like moving full sail parallel to an enemy ship should allow you to move around him. I like ships item consumption. Might provide enough drain on resources.

Nothing wrong with skip button - a way to fast forward fight (with semi randomized results based on powerdifferent between you & enemy), a way to automate fleeing (rough estimation of your & enemy speed, how many shot he wil take at you before you escape etc.) and automated boarding (with estimated how many shots enemy will take at you before you reach them based on your speed) would all be good. Finished Poka dungeon and will try the ship combat some more - my first impression is that there isn't much decisionmaking in it. I am disappointed by Insidious report that wounded by cannonballs crewmembers fight during boarding anyway. At first glance I though they really managed to put in a real ship to ship combat system into the game - with ability to outmaneuver enemy, defeat him in combat, board him or weaken him (lets say take down some of his crew) before boarding, or target sails, and force him to surrender. If it will stay like this, it looks like they dumped a lot of effort into a very weak system... which would be a shame. Unless there is some hidden depth in crew management and combat I haven't figure out yet. So far I haven't seen "ship upgrade" sheet anywhere. During campaign they mentioned they wanted ships to act like stronghold - with different rooms to fill it with. They might have abandoned the system in favour of fitting the ship with "items".

During first encounter of adra animat I defeated enemy group but combat didn't end. As it turns out one of the animats didn't activate. He remained inactive, even after I attacked him.

Let me explain what is happening here: I engaged spiders blocking the way with my fighter and animal companion, and DPS from distance with everyone else. My mage casted "slicken" proning spiden at the front. He got pushed aside but another spider, who wanted to attack my fighter. Suddenly, 1st enemy spider (proned) seems out of range and everyone is rushig forward trying to reach him. He can be reached by AOE attacks and projectile attacks (like rolling flame) but not targeted by weapons. EDIT: As battle progressed, enemy was still stucked but he became targetable.

yhh. I would much prefer for combat to be decent and boarding to be one of the feature of combat, rather than "skip" button.

Spotting enemies through wall is notorious. Just happened again in Poko ruins as you mentioned. In screeshot below the view is centered on spotted enemy: and again:

After couple failed attempts I turned to critical path and will return to sea combat once I am done dungeoning. Unfortunately, after couple attempts it is exactly my impression. Combat seems to consist of firing one side of the ship, doing a jibe and firing another. If ship has better stats than you it will win, if not - you will. Speed seems to be purely dependent on your crew and stats - if enemy ship is faster it will simply excape before you can do anything about (that was my experience once I stated to play aggresively.) Overall, result of combat seems more dependant on stats rather than tactics. Right now I am way to slow to attempt boarding. I am worried that without some spice added to it, it might turn out to be tedious, rather than fun.

If you hover over the icon it expains exactly what it means.

Sadly game still doesn't remember custom formations and resets it with every load.

Ok, there is no wind - -6 deflection comes full sail forward. What confuses me is movement. It seems like you can only do "full sail ahead" only once per turn? After that I need to either manuver or stop right in our track. There is a prompt to feel at the very start of the combat, rather than that you need to move away from enemy ship.

After reloading a quicksave and engaging in combat ompanions portraits popped up.

Just making sure to exclude all potential female participants.

Ship to ship combat is way more robust than I anticipated. I wonder if it will stay fun, or become tedious after a while. I wish there was a more detailed attack system (aim for different system of the ship to demage crew members, cripple manuvers, delay enemy attack.) Right now I am not sure what is the gameplay elements beyond - move from one side to another and shoot, or rush your enemy and board. Wind seems to be a thing, which gives bonuses if you use it well. After getting murdered, I am now off to figure the system out.

Darn, you were first to bring the good news

As my game crashed after trying to reload after getting killed in shipbattle:-D. I decided to post just a few bugs I encountered during my current playthrough: Psychic helmsman: Naked crewmembers 8-I

But that’s what people wanted, right? “Oh, why am I good with two weapons from get go, and can’t pick up two weapon fighting for my rogue” or “in PoE I could soft multiclass within one class and here I have to multiclass!” But we will see. Maybe they will be interesting ones.

It is today! Lets rejoice! And go to sleep. So I can find time and play new beta tomorrow.

Thank you!

Hurray...? Curious how it will work out. Ideally, they will enable wider range of builds, not limit characters further (not you gotta pick an additional perk to be decent at anything).

@khango I do agree that the system should be presented in a more natural way. Personally I hope that talent sheet will show in the upper corner how much class resource you gain per lvl (faith, rage, guild etc.) and amount needed to reach next power lvl. As far as renaming - I really don’t mind. They seem fine, nothing that really struck me as odd. Counting “faith” in numbers makes just as much sense as a bond between ranger and their animal, or Ciphers psychic powers. I am more concerned about making mechanics transparent and reducing need to memorise the manual - when do you gain power level, how do power level and empowerment influence each of the skills etc. Tying conversation checks to class resources doesn’t really make much sense. This already exists to some extend as your class unlocks special interactions. All that would add is an additional lvl requirement to pass those checks (amount of resources you have is based on your lvl, so even when you multiclass it is always static and you have no influence over it). Other checks are based on resources you have influence on - attributes and skills. It could be an interesting mechanic if resources wouldn’t replenish between battles and you could spend them in battle or in conversations - alas it is not the case here.

I find BG2 ambivalent in that regard. Cause Act 2 is a major part of the game (which, granted, varies depending on your style of play) which is very open. I find it the best part of the game. I rate "freedom" of my RPGs based on how much creativity and choice you have in completeing quests rather than how many quests it throws at you at the same time. While act 2 opens the world up, and gives you access to many quests to choose from, individual quest still have a fairly rigit structure. It certainly gives a feeling of overwhelming freedom, as you can abandon on thread and follow another, but quests themselves are fairly limited. Not a bad design per say: it allows for a feeling of influence, while keeping structured and easy to control enviroment. SR: Dragonfall used this very formula with a great success - bunch of linear sidequests with some choice involved within, which you can complete in any order you wish, with main story content between missions all leading toward final objective. Now, when I am thinking about it - I am trying to figure out what is different between 2nd Act of BG2 or Dragonfall and something like KOTOR or Dragon Age: O. The latter two examples never worked for me, and I found the "freedom" too easy to see through. BG2 and Dragonfall maintained the feeling of freedom, even though I am fully aware of the structure... huh.