arkteryx

The removal of re-targeting in TB somewhat incentivizes action speed so you can aim more precisely. I don't like the change personally, but I suppose it's something.

They mention in the video that they redid some content including new voice-overs. Mainly relating to Woedica and Eothas so don't expect the whole game to be new but supposed to make the gods' motivations clearer.

So does this make the final boss easier or harder after killing the megabosses? Another case where they should really let us see tooltips for enemies.

Only if you choose the optional challenge when starting the game. Otherwise you can take as long as you want.

And there was much rejoicing!

They are presumably focusing on the console port which should be coming out any time now (was originally listed as march 31st, now TBD). Hopefully that will include fixes and the non-beta version of TB that then will also appear in the PC version.

My problem with the sundial part was that the door to the tower didn't show up as interactable like every other door in the game, so I just kept going back and forth looking for the last fragment. Finally had to look up a youtube guide.

What do the arcane conduits and bile ducts do on him? I tried killing them at first, didn't seem to do anything so I just burned the boss. But I wonder if there was a better strategy there.

Not sure if that's a bug or intended, you too can perform some free actions like changing stance even when it's not your turn. I haven't figured out which you can and which you can't (you definitely can't use second chance the most obvious one) but some work.

But would you? Pausing every other second to swap weapons in RTwP would be incredibly tedious. Suppose there was an ability that let you instakill any enemy if you could solve a fiendishly difficult math problem but would kill you if you answered incorrectly. No one would use it because it would be too hard and the penalty too harsh. Now suppose they changed the math problem to simple addition. It would break the game even though this would only technically be a "quality of life" change. The hypothetical strength of the ability hasn't changed (in perfect play it automatically wins in either case) but its real life applicability certainly has. I would argue TB affects several abilities, such as spirit tornado or free weapon swapping, in the same way. It doesn't matter that you could hypothetically get similar (though again I'd argue not identical) performance in RTwP, the increased ease of use materially affects the strength and balance of abilities.

Yeah it's kind of sad that you can't use smoke bomb to make stealth attacks in turn based since it runs out before your next turn (unless you have stupid amounts of intelligence). The only useful way to use assassin is the stealth upgrade to escape since it's a free action, but it costs 3 guile instead of 2 like smoke bomb so you can't use it much. Still does work on my cipher/assassin, open from stealth to fill focus, spam spells for a while, then vanish to refill. Works because I can get several turns worth of cipher spells off of one stealth attack, wouldn't be as good for a true melee that was trying to attack every turn since you'd run out.

But you can​ spam spirit tornado... in RTwP. TB only makes more apparent some strong features already existing in RTwP. I recently found a reddit post about how convenient Black Jackets are becaus eof instant swapping. But this isn't a new feature from TB. Good luck getting the enemy to stand still for even 4 seconds to dump your spirit tornados. The ability to perfectly position yourself against stationary targets is what makes spamming it OP. As for black jacket swapping, it's not just convenient, it's broken. If you could swap once per turn, allowing you to always have the best weapon for a given target, that would be reasonable. But swapping to that weapon to attack then swapping back to a dagger and large shield for huge defense on the enemy turn is not. I suppose you could hypothetically swap in RTwP in between every auto-attack (not sure how that would affect your recovery, does it still go off your old weapons even after you switch), but that would be insane. I challenge anyone to say that they played this way. And even then it wouldn't be as good as the current TB system since you would at least be more vulnerable during your attack animation as opposed to always having the higher defenses against all enemy attacks.

The common request is to let you use any number of unique free actions but each one only once. So you can buff your battlemage but you can't spam spirit tornado.

Appears to be fixed. I tested Frygist and Kapana Taga at least, dropped as intended from boarding.

I had this happen with Lord Darryn's Voulge too, supposed to be slash shock. If one AR is lower it properly switches types but if they were simply immune to shock it did nothing (didn't test on slash immune targets). Luckily there are very few shock immune enemies so just fake your way through those fights and move on. There are however lots of pierce immune enemies, have you tried it on them, would be interesting to see what it does.