yoyolll

Except you can't, because there is no way to stop Eothas from destroying the Wheel. Well, actually, there is, but because of plot armor, Magran won't do it, even if you ask her to.

I did the same thing. I was like....oh...they didn't make him immune to this... da fug. I'm so used to bosses being immune to any sorta one shot thing it surprised me. Seriously onty did it on a whim. I reloaded though to see how hard he would be without doing it and still wasn't that tough. And his buddies dropped like minnows. Reminded me of the old Phoenix down trick from earlier FF games lol. Might be an unpopular opinion, but I really like this kind of thing. It rewards you for knowing the mechanics. Pretty much any DnD based game has this kind of stuff in it, especially the old infinity engine games. Obsidian is quite fond of increasing encounter difficulty by giving tough enemies immunities across the board. That feels like a really cheap way to make an encounter difficult. You have all these well-designed mechanics in the game, and then you can't use them for the toughest fights just because. When I was fighting the dragons in Pillars 1, I found myself often thinking "well why do I even have all these spells, then? What's the point in unlocking high level Wizard/Priest/Druid/Chanter/Cipher spells if none of them work when I most need them?"

I'm confused what exactly Fulvano's voyage is. It was a backer goal, but most of the islands on the path were integral to the faction sidequests: https://forums.obsidian.net/uploads/monthly_05_2018/post-43623-0-84885100-1526242014.jpg So would we just not have gotten Crookspur, Wahaki, and the Principi if the backer goals weren't met? Because otherwise, only Drowned Barrows and Splintered Reef are left, and those were quite small.

Pretty much all rpg are like that. 80% of the contents are side quest. The main quest is always short. It just so happens that the ending can be affected by the side quests giving it the illusion of length. The sidequests are pretty short, too. Each faction has only 3 to 6 quests and they all overlap. They send you to the same locations and ask you to resolve the same problem slightly differently. Most of my time was spent hunting bounties and charting islands.

I'm not sure why you have to choose only one ally at the end. I managed to satisfy Huana, VTC, and Principi, and I made a save so I could see the final quest for each of them. None of them seemed to oppose each other, but picking one locks you out of the other. I understand why you have to choose between VTC and RDC, but why is it not possible to ally with Huana, Principi, and either VTC or RDC? And yes, the ending slides were pretty disappointing. The ending overall left a pretty bad taste in my mouth after an otherwise great game. I tried a few different things with my last save and it barely changed the slides at all. I'm waiting for them to get added to the wiki so I can see all the possibilities, but I suspect there will be far fewer options than Pillars 1 had.

It's not an estimate, I beat it in 50 hours and got every island, every bounty, every companion, 3 out of 4 faction questlines (couldn't do the final quest for the RDC), bought every ship in the game, did every side quest, and beat the game on veteran difficulty: http://i.imgur.com/1guOAOZ.png I play at a pretty leisurely rate, too. I really have no idea how people are playing this for longer than 50-60 hours. In fact, that's what the first results on HLTB say, too: https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=44045 Maybe I'm just taking my time reading through dialogue or something? I don't feel like my pace has been especially leisurely and I haven't lost a fight yet due to the atrocious difficulty balancing (although I did switch to PoTD via console about 20 hours back, so maybe that's slowing me down). I don't know why I'm on track to get double the hours out of this game than you have. Did you go to Ashen Maw early on? Maybe it locks you out of some side content or something (feel free to post a screenshot of your journal, would be interesting to see if there are any glaring differences). I feel like my gameplay has been pretty purposeful and I still have three of the final four faction quests, one dragon, 3 bounties, and about 1/5 of the map still unexplored. I spend about the same amount of time as others on most CRPGs, so it's weird that there's so much of a discrepancy between playthroughs. That said, I'm sorry you're having a negative experience. If I were a backer and felt like I'd experienced everything the game has to offer in 52 hours, I would be frustrated too. In these types of games, I always do every bit of side content I can before moving on with the main quest. Before Ashen Maw, I did all the sidequests I could, explored every uncharted island, did all companion quests, and killed all the bounties and named ships. My party was level 20 by the time I got to Ashen Maw. I really did not have a negative experience at all with Deadfire. I hope I haven't given that impression. The ending did kind of leave a sour taste in my mouth, but overall I like the game a lot, I just wish there was more. My only major complaint with the game is the lack of content in terms of dungeons/combat and short questlines. Like I said, they have a good opportunity here to fix those two things with the DLC.

Yes, unless there is a special area at the final RDC questline, I've visited every map in the game. Old City Ruins, while short, had a really well done theme. But I wish there was more to do in it. It felt more like a wilderness area from Pillars 1 rather than a dungeon. Sepulchers was great too, but it was tiny. That kind of applies to Deadfire as a whole, I think. Great game, but not enough of it. They have a good opportunity to fix that with the DLCs.

It's not an estimate, I beat it in 50 hours and got every island, every bounty, every companion, 3 out of 4 faction questlines (couldn't do the final quest for the RDC), bought every ship in the game, did every side quest, and beat the game on veteran difficulty: http://i.imgur.com/1guOAOZ.png I play at a pretty leisurely rate, too. I really have no idea how people are playing this for longer than 50-60 hours. In fact, that's what the first results on HLTB say, too: https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=44045

I count 93 completed quests in my playthrough. And again, I skipped some. But I guess “low number” is relative. I feel like I’m understanding Josh’s recent presentation more the last couple of days. All some people want are dungeon crawlers. If you really want to compare it that way, then Pillars 1 had 132 quests, Baldur's Gate 1 had 128, and Baldur's Gate 2 had 120. But obviously, that's a useless comparison. Anyway, the issue isn't that I don't want them to do something different. In fact, I love the concept of sailing and exploring in Deadfire. The problem is that they removed dungeons and didn't put anything in it's place. So now you have a game with these great sailing/exploring mechanic, but very little to do in it other than dialogue peppered with a few small battles. And to be totally honest, I don't really know what they could have replaced dungeons with. cRPGs are essentially a marriage of dungeon crawling (combat and loot) and roleplaying (quests and dialogue). They removed 1/2 of that and replaced it with a sailing mechanic which isn't adequate by itself to fill that void. I think maybe if they fleshed out ship combat and added some more RPG mechanics to that, then it might have gotten the job done. But right now, the game feels somewhat barren.

But to be clear, the playtime really isn't a big deal for me. Good dungeons and quests is much more important. Deadfire has pretty much no dungeons at all. And the quests are, for the most part, really great, but I think there aren't really enough of them.

That's a good point. If you compare to 99% of games, 50 hours is fantastic. But we have to compare Deadfire to other cRPGs, and those tend to be very long. For 2D cRPGs, I've played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale 1 and 2, Fallout 1 and 2, Planescape: Torment, Pillars of Eternity, and Tyranny. I would say the average across these games is probably somewhere around 80 - 100 hours for me. So 50 hours compared to other 2D cRPGs is pretty short.

I don’t know how that’s possible. It took me 110 hours to complete the game on veteran and I know there was VTC and Principi content that I didn’t touch. Wow really? I played on Veteran as well and I'm just not sure how to stretch that out into 110 hours. I play very leisurely. I got all achievements except RDC ending, max soulbound level, recruit all sidekicks (accidentally killed Mirke, whoops), and survive a mutiny: http://i.imgur.com/1guOAOZ.png The faction questlines are deceptive. I'll explain without spoiling any story: Pretty much all the faction quests deal with the same plot points. Each faction will ask you to handle a situation slightly differently. You can usually appease 3 out of 4 factions in each quest if you're thorough, e.g. by talking to everyone and looking for solutions that don't involve killing named characters (although I did end up killing a lot of named characters, but the faction leaders are very reluctant to cut you off from future quests). With VTC and RDC, you have to choose one or the other on the 2nd to last quest. And then you choose between Principi, Huana, and either VTC or RDC on the final quest. So, in the end, you barely miss out on anything in one playthrough unless you did something like go on a killing spree in one of the factions' headquarters. I was planning on doing at least one more playthrough before realizing this. I'll play again once all 3 DLCs come out. For now, the lack of dungeons and the low number of quests are really discouraging me from a second run.

Really? The whole game, including all the islands and bounties, took me about half as long as POE1. I found the exploration disappointing, too. The islands are mostly barren, and the "dungeons" - if you can call them that - are just a few rooms each with barely any enemies. It feels like they attempted to replace traditional dungeons with island exploring, but there just isn't enough of it. I would have rather had fewer islands with more stuff than a bunch of islands with one small location each.

I've been playing for 12 hours and still haven't cleared Neketakta. There is a lot of game here. I don't know.... Pillars 1 took me around 80 hours to beat plus 20-30 hours for White March. I beat Pillars 2 in 48 hours. For the record, I always do all the side quests, get all companions, visit all locations, etc. Leave no stone unturned, basically. And I play pretty leisurely. I take my time with quests and I read all the dialogue, item descriptions, and books like a big nerd. I know many people have beaten the game in 20-30 hours, but I don't get the point of blasting through an RPG like that. Anyway, ~50 hours is pretty short for a cRPG. Even KotOR which was fully 3D took me around 60-70 hours IIRC. That being said, those 80 hours in Pillars 1 included a ton of combat in meaningless encounters. I quite enjoyed that, but I know that it's not considered "high quality" content by a lot of RPGers. At first, Deadfire is dauntingly large. But then you realize the vast majority is dialogue. The islands are mostly barren and there are fewer locations than in Pillars 1. I did enjoy the game quite a bit, but I'm still disappointed in the length and lack of content. Just like Tyranny, it kind of feels like the whole game is setting up for a climax that never occurs. Right when things start to get interesting, it ends. I hope the DLCs will add a large amount of both story and combat to the game. Once I discovered how short the faction quests are and how little combat there is, my hopes of doing several playthroughs kind of died. Without spoiling anything, there is a lot more overlap in the various faction questlines than you would think. The main point of difference turns out to be just before the end. So I made a save and explored the final quest of all 4 factions. There is very little you don't see during one playthrough.

Generally, people will get paid to do this, so don't feel too bad.

It would be between this one and Concelhaut + Cragholdt Bluffs for me. Although really, all of White March was packed full of really great set piece encounters.

Volunteer (or paying) beta testers are no replacement for proper QA. This game, and just about every Obsidian game ever, needed a lot more time with QA before release.

You do. That quest unlocks after you go to Ashen Maw. It sets up the final VTC quest.

So if I understand correctly, the primary assumption you have to make to avoid a retcon is that the gods are lying to you (either knowingly or because they don't know the actual truth) about what existed before the Wheel and what will happen once the Wheel is destroyed, and you have to assume this without any sort of evidence otherwise in either game save for a subtle implication in a two sentence description of a several-thousand-year-old historical figure? That just sounds like sloppy writing to me tbh.

Which one is Oathbinder's Sanctum? I might have missed it.

I'm not convinced this is a bug, unless I missed something in my playthrough. The questline is just really really short. The dialogue, however, is bugged. For people here, once you advance the main quest to the last part (almost end-game), Furrante and either Castol or Atsura should give you another quest. Once you do either Castol or Atsura's quest, then Onezaka has more dialogue, too. For me, the dialogue was all messed up before I advanced the main quest. They were asking me about things that were already resolved, and talking about things that I hadn't done. After I advanced the main quest, their dialogue was fixed and Castol gave me another quest (I had done Crookspur in his favor). After Crookspur/Wahaki, the VTC, RDC, and Principi questlines just pause and wait for you to get to the final part of the main quest. You have to get to the end of the game before they advance past Crookspur/Wahaki. You can still do one more quest for Onezaka involving the Watershapers before that, but then that's it for her, too. The questlines are just super short.

I loved Endless Paths, too. But Deadfire seems to have gone the opposite direction, with no real dungeons at all. Very disappointing after the great dungeons in Pillars 1. I wish someone would make a cRPG like Icewind Dale again, where it was 90% dungeon crawl and the story was told through the dungeons themselves.

I finished the game tonight. Explored the whole map, did all available quests and bounties. For those wondering, Drowned Barrows is the closest thing to a dungeon in Deadfire. Loved the game overall, but I found this to be a major flaw.

Well that sucks, and I agree many of the quests work in a very odd manner. I myself have had conversations with Furrante at the request of other npc's about issues I have already talked to Furrante about, and had to sit through him acting like we hadn't already had the conversation. But the quest still worked after that. Heck I went to a certain island before visiting anywhere in Neketaka other than queens berth, and yes, it lead to some really WEIRD conversations, like npcs telling me they would offer me work, only to immediately say they have no work go talk to xyz instead. I assume their work involved that island. That's really funky, but not broken. I define broken as "it be broke, you can't do it". To keep this Obsidian focused a great example of a broken game component I encountered once was in Fallout New Vegas. After screwing around for hours on end and doing craptons other than main story, I finally rolled into New Vegas. I was promptly greeted by the sheriff robot who for some reason was severely damaged and about to explode even though the last time I saw him he was fine. He immediately calls me a traitor to Mr House for destroying him ??? (I never so much as gave him a dirty look), he proceeds to explode, and I am now hostile KOS to Mr. House's faction. That was weird, and it was broke. However I didn't go insane about it on forums or reviews because I knew that had to be some perfect storm of nonsense I somehow did that I would never be able to figure out, and likely effected very few people. So it sucks those quests are broke for you, I wouldn't assume that means they are broken for most people, or even a large percentage. It sounds like you know you did things in an unintended way, and I know doing stuff in an unintended way on a crpg that has just released tends to break things. That doesn't make it okay, but at least you can still beat the game without having an ending choice blocked off because some robot got mauled by a deathclaw or something and decided to blame you. As for whoever managed to completely block off even talking to Onezaka, be real, you know that is some insane one in a million bug that is not effecting hardly anyone. It really sucks it happened to you, I really do feel your pain, you have every right to be pissed, report it to Obsidian, but also be logical. The odds of that happening on anyone's playthrough is tiny, you probably don't even know how to reproduce it, or if it even can be re produced. You can restart, I understand why you might not want to, you can wait for patches, you can even demand a refund and if I was Obsidian I would give it to you. Just don't act like this massive storm of your game going to heck is normal, it clearly isn't because people are beating the game left and right, and no review outlet reported any bug even remotely that bad. Even the negative ones. Actually, I was able to reproduce that bug with Onezaka and explained it when I reported it in the tech support forum. And judging by the amount of responses most of these reports get, I think a lot of people are running into broken quests. The way you handle Crookspur in particular seems to be a real easy way to unwittingly mess up a lot of dialogue and quests. The quests involving Dereo and the Gullet break way too easily as well (especially Cornett's Call and Food For Thought). If you check the tech support forum you'll see how many people struggled with those two areas in particular. I really think those bugs should have been caught before launch. In an open ended RPG like this, you can't expect players to only do things as intended. I didn't go out of my way to break anything, I just played the game leisurely doing whatever quest I felt like at the time. But in the end, I did beat the game, and I finished the faction questlines. I'm not sure how Onezaka worked out her feelings, but I think it at certain points it must clear out her dialogue or something. Either way, all of the factions ended up working out despite all that. So I stand by my statement that the game is not broken (at least for me), but there are certainly broken quests.

LOL I also found out I can dominate her back to my side with Aloth's wand, so Slippery Mind is certainly not working.