CAlmond

There's a bug with this helmet when used on a female elf. Not sure if there are any other models that have the same issue:

I didn't even know you can recruit copperhead. Does that only happen if you destroy the orb?

The thing is though, most of Deadfire is about fleshing out that world. Instead of a big main story that focuses on your character, it has a multitude of smaller stories that focuses on the rest of the people living in the world of Eora. Their motivations, their political stances, their goals, their culture etc. The first game doesn't actually give you that much info about the world other than the Dyrwood area. You see mentions of other regions like the Deadfire, but no real meaningful info. I think somebody else said it best, a lot of newer games basically falls into "the hero's journey" type story. Where it focuses on one character (the player character) and everything is about that character, even the small random things are somehow related to that character. That's not the case with Deadfire. Deadfire is about a world that you are dropped in with a passable reason/in game motivation for being in the area. But it's not really a story about The Watcher, it's a story about the world of Eora and it's people. The Watcher is just a footnote. If you want a hero's journey, PoE and PoE II are definitely not for you. But if you want to romp around in a fantasy world doing random things, PoE was decent and PoE II is great. How about I want both :D like in Morrowind, Witcher 3 or BG2? It's not impossible to make at all. But nevertheless- whatever we expected from game or whatever type of game we prefer - the point is: main story is not only short, but also weak. I can stand behind short main story (for example till this day I remember how good some short main stories were like for example CoD: Black Ops or Nier: Automata) if it's great or even just average good one if it's long. However when story is both short and weak- well, it's hard to find good thing about it. I like other things in Deadfire, I am only dissapointed in main story. Definitely agree it's not impossible to make. But think of relative budgets between the games. PoE 2 cost around $4 - $5m right? That is tiny relatively speaking. Witcher 3 was $80m+ if I remember correctly. BGII was also in the $4m range from memory, but that's almost 20 years ago so in relative terms it still costs a whole lot more than PoE 2 when you take into account inflation. PoE 2 is a small to medium sized game budget wise. Can't compare it like for like against games with multiple times their budget and man-hours.

let me guess, easiest difficulty, skip every single VO, level scaling down? I said 15h is when I take it easy. If you want to rig things to that degree I can take my max exp sorcerer to the beginning of BGII, lowest difficulty, skip every single skippable cutscene and dialogue and finish that game in just about an hour too. Between the gods, the narrator, onekaza, clario etc you have at least an hour's worth of voiced dialogue alone in the critical path of PoE 2. Although technically speaking you can finish PoE 2 in just a few minutes by telling Berath to go away, so I suppose PoE 2 is still shorter.

The thing is though, most of Deadfire is about fleshing out that world. Instead of a big main story that focuses on your character, it has a multitude of smaller stories that focuses on the rest of the people living in the world of Eora. Their motivations, their political stances, their goals, their culture etc. The first game doesn't actually give you that much info about the world other than the Dyrwood area. You see mentions of other regions like the Deadfire, but no real meaningful info. I think somebody else said it best, a lot of newer games basically falls into "the hero's journey" type story. Where it focuses on one character (the player character) and everything is about that character, even the small random things are somehow related to that character. That's not the case with Deadfire. Deadfire is about a world that you are dropped in with a passable reason/in game motivation for being in the area. But it's not really a story about The Watcher, it's a story about the world of Eora and it's people. The Watcher is just a footnote. If you want a hero's journey, PoE and PoE II are definitely not for you. But if you want to romp around in a fantasy world doing random things, PoE was decent and PoE II is great.

As much as I love the old games, people are looking at them through eyes of nostalgia. I find PoE2's story has bad points here and there, just like any game story. I don't think it was particularly great or particularly bad. It's good enough to be the reason why the PC is in the Deadfire area. Mostly I'm just enjoying wandering around the world doing random things, which is what I bought the game for in the first place. And as far as critical path length goes, BGII SoA critical path is less than 15h and that's me taking it easy. Anybody spending 50h on BGII critical path only run, is not doing a critical path only run, you probably went off and did a whole bunch of sidequests. Without even specifically aiming to raise money for Gaelan, his nephew usually comes running to me less than an hour after I'm out of jon's dungeon. I'm pretty sure Nalia's keep which is super easy gives you like 10k just from the quest reward alone, then you add in the stuff you picked up while doing it and you can get 15k easy with just one quest.

I made Fassina a loremaster and had her specialize in lightning related abilities. She's ripping things apart on ship fights without me controlling her (she's not in the main party) Seeing that has actually made me want to try a run with a loremaster as my PC.

because the game currently isnt big enough to make them worthwhile, by the time you gain enough levels to get what you want half the game is over, I will be rolling multis after the expansions come out that isn't true at all, even at level 5 they're already great, and you can reach level 5 I think before you even leave the first island or just after leaving. That's nowhere near half the game. As others have said, you need to actually plan them out properly instead of just going with what has a name you like. Now single classes do have their value as well due to accessing higher level abilities much sooner. So I think overall their power is reasonably balanced.

preparations

Yeah, Emeini is the only one I have with more than 4 stars total. Everybody else I've left in specific positions for ages trying to get them more stars and they simply don't. It stays with 4 total stars max. Which makes me think there is now more value for specialised crew members. Initially I thought they could achieve 4 stars in whatever they had stars to begin with so I deliberately went for multi talented ones.

I'm not sure this is true. I've seen multiple crew members gain a level and yet they didn't gain any stars. I'm more inclined to believe that "level" for crew is the same as "level" for your party. And so: Rank = Sailing ability Level = Combat ability.

There's a minor NPC in a xaurip cave thing on the same island that Neketaka is on, she has no VO at all. Not sure if there are no lines recorded for her of if her lines were recorded but somehow not playing during the conversation. If it helps, there was another trader in the same cave whose lines are voiced and Maia chirped in during that conversation.

I generally like to use jibe, because I can basically shoot nonstop. so the order would be: 1. Get into proper range 2. Turn port/starboard 3. Hold Position/Brace if required 4. Shoot 5. Jibe 6. Go back to step 3 and repeat until enemy dead. Where this strategy won't work is if you are completely outclassed on all areas by the enemy ship. In those moments I just try to close in and board them instead. Personally I've been hiring crew based on potential combat ability rather than sailing ability because I like boarding them and getting a lot more loot. Birta can make short work of most enemy sailors and acts as a tank too.

I generally have Maia as a Ranger/Rogue multiclass. On both class trees, I mainly pick passive options that maximise her damage or her pet's damage with maybe 2 actual active abilities for each class. She doesn't need to debuff anyone because the rest of my party is full of debuffers. She is currently top of my party in hits, crits, damage done and kills. Which is exactly what I want from her.

Pretty sure this is true. At the end of the day, the mortals care more about how they will eat tomorrow and personal power rather than whether or not the world will end tomorrow. So the behaviour of the factions make sense. And I'm fairly sure they've mentioned in pre-release material that PoE2 has less main story than PoE1 but a lot more side stuff. So I think the goal from the beginning was exploration of this particular area.

Only the new companions. And they're not bisexual, they're playersexual. Which is way worse. Xoti shows no interest at all in women unless it's a female watcher that's coming on to her. I didn't even realize this. If so that is annoying, I used to play BGII with my PC race and gender selection based on who WON'T be romanced by my planned core NPC party members. So if I plan to take Anomen for whatever reason I play a male, if I plan to take any of the three female romances I purposely play a female or a specific male race that I know they won't romance. I ended up never really playing human, half-elf or halfling much because of it since everybody romances those three races.

the key thing to remember here is that they already mentioned that your actions in PoE1 may not come back in PoE2 in ways you were expecting. So unless you've done 100% of every possible thing multiple times using different backgrounds, it may be a bit hard to notice.

you get 2 ability points for some of the levels. But 2 ability points each level would be super OP. As it stands I think a level 20 multi class only has 1 ability point less than a pure class You do not actually level slower, you just get access to higher level skills slower, which is often not really an issue. I've multiclassed many of the NPCs and my own PC and so far I've never found myself lacking in ability points.

I found something that isn't a typo exactly, but is also a textual bug. The actual line he's saying is "Tipa if you would just listen" or something along those lines. I'm pretty sure this one should be 'You have been touched..." This is the convo with the dawnstars guy who ran away from hasongo

though I generally don't mind the narration, I do agree with that, it just seems like a really weird thing to add. Reminds me of my writing for english class back in highshool where I try to pad everything with "he says" and "she says" to increase my word count.

Off topic, not sure why but I read that as "pommel bike" On topic, I find that with rogues and physical attackers in general I rarely go for active abilities and instead focus on passive buffs. I didn't even notice that most of those skills are samey.

Agreed on the easy money thing. You could also buy that small ship with the cannons at the front in case your prey tries to run so you can still shoot them if needed

1. While I'm not 100% sure since I don't work for them, but I imagine the short answer is likely "too much work for too little gain". Realistically very few people would consider that feature to be a dealbreaker if missing. It would likely fall into the "low priority quality of life" bucket rather than the "core functionality must have" bucket. 2. Oh I see what you mean now. A more serious piratical stuff would be nice, but personally whenever I see a "pirate" themed anything, my mind immediately goes to guybrush threepwood and straight away I imagine it to be more comical/light hearted rather than serious. 3. You know Dhalsim, and I think M Bison can both float in the air right? Personally I found that I don't have to use all that many abilities. Most ability picks have been for passive ones because I rarely need to use actual abilities in the fights themselves. Even for my casters I may pick 2-3 spells for each power level and the rest of their points go straight to passive abilities. I think this one is more of a playstyle choice, you can choose to drown yourself in active abilities, or you can choose more passives.

Romance languages have many common words that sound alike. Like the word "friend" you're mentioning. But Vailians are based on Italians (Venecians more specific) as it is mentioned by the developers themselves. oh I knew that, I was just saying that rather than the other words, the main thing that sticks out for me is 'aimico' For the 'Ducs' I've heard it pronounced both duke and ducks, so I think it depends a lot as well on who is saying it. And this is true of some other words, for example Mogwyr pronounces Dunryd differently to other people (in PoE1).

how did you resolve it? which path did you take?