Myrtillo

Different canons have different reload times. And the 4 slots are to assign sailors to fix the issue, via the "report to positions" order.

It does have upgrades. All uniques do.

No idea about red tear. Capture allows you to swap places with an ennemy and does a full attack in the process. Don't remember if it is per rest or per encounter. The upgrades are checkmate (ennemy is also stun if after swap he is surrounded by your characters) and promote (you can also swap with an ally and they get smart inspiration). As a chess fan I love the concept of this weapon, Pallegina has been wearing it in all my playthroughs :D

Wearing the Engoliero gives a malus (-1) to some stats, that turns into a +3 bonus after you kill an ennemy. There is an upgrade that turns that into a -0 >> +1 if you don't like the idea of malus. I don't have my game here to check which stats, I think it is the physical stats though. Maybe others can confirm.

Title, really. I am thinking about my next character, that will probably be a melee ghost heart ranger. For roleplay reasons, she will be dual wielding a hatchet and a dagger (going for that feral feel). But in my last playthrough I only found one unique hatchet (not counting Xoti's sickle), it is the one on Tikawara island that is specialized against plants and ennemies with plant effects. At first I thought about doing a combo with binding/thorny roots, but unfortunately these are ground effects, not plant effects. The wiki also mentions acolyte`s frostbite. I am looking for an alternative option. I remember reading from the "unbalance unique distribution" topic that there were 3 unique hatchets+sickle, so there is one that I am missing, and the wiki does not seem to have trace of it. Did anyone found another ? Stats ? Location ? Alternatively, is there any way to inflict a plant effect on ennemies, or are those only the various druid buffs ?

So far, I never took the starting armor off for any companion, because I love how they look, and never bothered to upgrade any past the starting quality (I do unlock the cheap enchants though). And all my main characters have been wearing miscreant leathers because it feels like the right look for a captain. This includes my pure streetfighter that was in the middle of the melee (Veteran) and my single class cipher (no sub) that is dual wielding gun+sword, most often in melee range (in PotD). I never felt the need to get anything heavier.

Scordeo's trophy is much better with the upgrade that makes the stack affect all recovery times, and not only melee. That being said, for fun and RP purposes, I specc'ed it for -25% recovery on melee attacks, so I can go for that pistol and cutlass feel on my melee cipher (psychic corsair!). Shoot, cancel reload by going into melee range, and slash things 25% faster. Not too strong, but decently efficient.

You mean, other than the stacking boost to recovery on hit, up to -20% recovery, so it eventually matches dual wield-recovery rates while being able to attack multiple opponents? That sword is the best weapon in the game, bar none. And you can get it for 3000 gold as soon as you reach Neketaka. It's insane. Um, with DW of sabers you can get full attacks out of Charge or Cleave or anything else that has Full Attack. Two-handed sword (yours) on my level deals around 60-75 cirt on full attack. While my dual sabers crit 70-80 each so when I do full attack or charge that is 140-160 dmg total. Dual wield is not about DPS, it's about burst with Full Attack abilities. And -20% recovery? I have no recovery after 1-2 charges :D when my one sabre proc or if not I still have -40-90% It's also better to dual wield because you can stack two effects. For example my one sabre stacks Crit Chance 2% each hit while my other stack accuracy 3% per hit, giving both weapons effects. Or one weapon can make you immune to flanking, while second one boost melee dmg 5% per one target attacking you. And other great combos Dual Wield > Two-handed just because of that. Also dmg is higher on most melee abilities because they are Full Attack. I agree that in terms of auto-attack when we have 0 recovery Twohanded>Dual wield. But not by much But if we talk about 0 recovery + Full Attack abilities like Penetrating Strike, Charge, FOD, Cleae etc. Dual Wield >> Two-handed as they always hit twice and sadly two-handed weapons do not really have damage advantage :/, which is my big grip in game. For example Wishper of Endless Path has 15-25 dmg, while one sabre has 23-34 (both weapons are Superb, no dmg increase talents, only pen from Devoted). Sanguine Great Sword looks better= 33-44 damage. Here Auto Attack on 0 recovery would be better, but still lose vs dual wield Full Attacks. On a class without full attacks, whispers should largely come out on top, thanks to the cone attack. It is the abundance of full attacks that make dual wield so dominant. In my opinion full attacks with both weapons should yield diminished damage (maybe -30% on each strike or even -40% ?). Dual wield would still benefit from increase recovery and two potential procs of on hit effects, and this would give two handed some relative increased damage. Full attacks dual wield are just too strong in the current state of the game.

So because it is not interesting to you, it is objectively a bad design ? Plus, why would being devoted means that you can't swap weapons to engage with the armor system and adapt to the situation ? If anything, it can create more depth in the character and more meaningful choices. Devoted: "I master the rapier, I do more damage to normal ennemies when I use the rapier. This particular ennemy has more piercing armor but is weak to crush damage. Should I swap to my side mace, knowing that I will be less accurate but do more damage ? Or should I keep my rapier and hope for a crit to penetrate that armor ?". Black jacket: This ennemy is weaker to that damage, let's swap to the appropriate weapon to do more damage". There is no real decision making, unless you play on expert mode and don't have access to the defensive information of your foe. You adapt to the situation. In both cases, players engage with the mechanic the way they intended to play their character. One with a tough choice on a situation where his mastery is not adapted, one with a good read and reaction to a situation to yield better results. This is exactly what those subclasses are supposed to be. Conclusion: Both subclasses are well designed and worth taking if that's the playstyle you like.

Full sail x5>board is always an option. When the deck battle isn't winnable (those triple red skulls), I am using: Sloop: 4 imperial bronzers at long range: Fire>Jibe>hold>Fire>Jibe>hold>Fire>repeat Dhow: 6 double bronzers at mid range: Fire>Jibe(x2)>hold>Fire>repeat Sloop required a few reloads on very heavy ships. Dhow downed any ship without trouble.

On one sword, that is only available under certain POE1 circumstances and choices. And that would not be the only item with a broken mechanic.

I mean, you pretty much summed it up in your response. There are many situations where you can get significantly more than +2 pen by switching weapon types. Crit damage is OK but the option to switch weapons to overpen on every swing is significantly better than it. And that's not counting being able to support the party with Club / Flail / Morningstar / Mace / Pike / Hatchet / Wand modals or Blast AoE. Devoted lets you avoid engaging with these systems and gives you a weapon that's good enough to always contribute. To me, it's the "Charge ahead!" option on ship encounters - I understand why it's there for other people, but I *like* engaging with these mechanics, and can't see myself ever choosing the subclass. You are looking at it only from a mechanics perspective. And from your gameplay experience. Let`s say I want to play a character that only uses rapiers. Devoted lets me do that and get some value out of it. With pros and cons, like a subclass should be. Actually, this is the criticism I would do to many people on this forum: They only look at balance from a pure mechanics perspective with a munchkin idea of their character. And I think this is a side-effect from the multiplayer culture where you have to be better than the other player, giving absolute precedence to the mechanics. I am not an advocate of "single player means balance doesn't matter". Balance does matter. But quite obviously Deadfire has been balanced around giving you the ability to play the character you want, not the character you have to. And I think devs did a really good job on that. All the subclasses pointed out as "useless" are not. Maybe for some of them the cons are bigger than the pros in the majority of situation, so what ? The purpose of the sublass is not to be stronger than another or a base class but to create a different gameplay experience, that fits with what you want to do with your character.

Why keep people saying that? Casting times of many powers got reduced a lot. Focus generation got buffed. Ascendant is crazy good, Soul Blade is good. Beguiler can be very useful. Cipher still has Whisper of Treason at lvl 1. That alone makes that class good. I think people like big numbers so they glorify classes/mc that do one shots and ditch utility classes. Cipher (no subclass) can win a fight in one cast of Ring Leader, At lvl 10 you can cast it with your starting focus if you picked the appropriate passives.

I thought recovery bonus/malus were affecting reload time too, the difference between reload and classic recovery being that you can cancel reload with an action. Did I understand something wrong ?

My cipher on PoTD uses and abuses ringleader (and before that puppetmaster). I find it extremely potent to the point that it probably needs a duration nerf. It is quite common that I end up having all the ennemies dominated/charmed, at which point I kill them 1 by 1 by forcing friendly auto-attack on them.

The answer really depends on your class and the weapons you are going to use. If you use a lot of full attacks, you want to dual wield melee or dual wield ranged, not melee+ranged. If your purpose is to attack fast with the melee weapon and do the occasional ranged attack, dual wield ranged+melee is good. And you get extra swag points. If you want to attack fast with a wand, blunderbuss or scepter, having a melee offhand is good. If you want to mostly attack fast with a pistol better single wield it and turn the modal on, and swap when you need melee. The more I play with pistol+sabre, the more I find it useful and fun.

I know it is counter intuitive, but it is because melee+ranged still counts as dual wield, so you get a bonus to recovery. And in the case of the pistol, the bonus is applied to reload. For details about the mechanics ranged+melee, read this: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/98647-is-there-any-point-to-dual-wielding-meleeranged-swordgun/

Yup. Right now I'm playing as a cipher corsair, he is wielding scordeo's trophy and gravecaller. Most of the time he shots once to trigger scordeo's passive, then runs in melee without recovery. He stacks gravecaller super fast, focus comes in at a constant pace. No problem so far in PoTD, and he's tons of fun.

If you want to keep all the caster potential but get some mobility, single class wizard can be good enough. Fleet feet/deleterious alacrity Dimensional Shift Items: The great escapist Leap Queen's rule (optional) Other items with mobility abilities So you would have swift or nimble permanently on, two dimensional shifts per encounter, one escape per encounter, and two leaps and one swap per rest. Just writing this makes me want to try it on Aloth! Autocast a few zero recovery defensive buffs+alacrity, run in melee range, use an aoe aura/cone nuke, Dimensional Shift out replacing yourself by your tank and stunning everyone, then nuke from distance, escape out/leap out when engaged. Should be tons of fun

No I can manually cast it on others. However I retried in a different zone, and it worked... I guess I was having a small AI bug.

I have a different, though related, question that pertains to the Lantern, but also to many other unique, upgradeable items. Can you "install" multiple upgrades, or are you limited in how many you can select? Depends on the item and the effect. Some are mutually exclusive, some stack, some are upgrades of the previous one, and some completely replace another one. You can see the result before upgrading the item. In the case of Xoti's lantern they are quest locked, which is a unique case afaik.

I don't know why that would be, but maybe try target: has inspiration - constitution (not)? I didn't understand either why it wouldn't work. And yup, it is the highest in the priority list. I tested around a bit, I believe it is not a condition issue but a target issue, because when I set it to ally or self instead of ally, Xoti casts it on herself. I'll test more and post the result. Create one box per spell always true>self>priority none, and set timer on the duration of your spell after int modifier. Put them all at the top of the list. This way your caster will cast them all at the beginning, and recast when they wear off if the casting ressources for that level have not been used for another spell.

"Best current threat" is an ambiguous description to begin with. I assume it means the strongest enemy on the battlefield, but even then, how it determines that would be a total mystery. I tried to make that work with -always true>prayer for the body>ally>highest will- so that Xoti buffs my watcher every fight but it seems to not be working. Are you using another conditional than always true ?? What is it doing instead? Not casting at all or casting on someone else? Not casting

I tried to make that work with -always true>prayer for the body>ally>highest will- so that Xoti buffs my watcher every fight but it seems to not be working. Are you using another conditional than always true ??

I did use stealth, although it was on the low side because I didn't put any points in it. Probably 6 because of 4 from the start (rogue with Blessing of Berath) and two from items. But I used the boots that give you two jumps per rest (because jump doesn't break stealth and it allows you to skip the entrance guard.) From there, a bit of patience and a few firecrackers did the trick. Grab everything in the vault then jump out with the second jump. That's one hell of a heist