Zelse

Ill give spellcasters Empower thats for sure. Only spellcasters really benefit from empower, some of the missile spells in particular are probably the best thing to be empowered in the entire game. Im also not aware of a +1spellcasts grimoire? That sounds quite good! Where is it / what is its name? Yeah, that 40 raw damage plague of insects with 22 alchemy every 3 seconds is pretty weak lol You think a player having to have 22 points in a skill for a spell to be effective is a legitimate argument? If it wasnt an exploit that will probably eventually get fixed (might take a while since its likely related to keywords which might be difficult depending on how they coded it) i would agree with him. Dumping all skill points in the upper tree to get spells that literally win the game for you by themselves after casting them once sounds pretty worth it to me. Literally you cast 1 time and everything dies. Its broken. It might still get beaten by the monk/ranger multishot+crit build which is slightly less exploity but just a broken combo/design oversight. But in the end neither of these should be used by anyone who wants to actually play the game rather than facerolling content because 2 things were overlooked.

Plague of insects and alchemy is clearly an exploit. Yeah, that 40 raw damage plague of insects with 22 alchemy every 3 seconds is pretty weak lol Chillfog starts at 5 penetration. It is a great spell for blinding enemies and only on tekehu since he gets it as FoeAoe rather than regular Aoe. And as i said in the starting post, yes there are some good utility spells in the game. The damage numbers you will get out of a spell that starts at 5 pen are (almost) ALWAYS going to be terrible on POTD. Even with expensive food+penTalent+tenacious you barely make 10. Most enemies after the first island have more than that. It also targets reflex without accuracy bonus so on average you wil graze 1-2 enemies out of 5 without heavy prebuffing for acc. You have to put in crazy amounts of work just to make this thing somewhat okay damage wise. Its not worth. Even with how mediocre many spells are. This one is particularly bad at dealing damage. (Still a great spell for the blind tho!)

Many of the encounters could still use some increases in difficulty. The bosses and the bountys in particular are still really underwhelming. Lots of later game content as well. The animancer quest, Berkarnas observatory, crookspur island all havent been adjusted. The lategame faction quests probably havent been as well. The only thing that did get a makeover so far seems to be some of the fights on sayuka. Other than thats i been quite disappointing after the early mid game.

It's actually p. easy, you just need 1 character with escape/leap who you will use to get the item. Rest can wait/prebuff anywhere else while you pull mobs around some stairs. Yea i can see that working. It is cheesy af tho. Might as well reset combat and just walk away entirely if the encounter can be reset. Or go invisible or sth and just walk away.

The penetration really doesnt help (the deflection is great tho for your NON SPELLCASTERS *hint hint* since getting more pen after you already do 100% is generally not getting anywhere (double the enemies armor in pen is mostly unrealistic/not worth) Also you now have to at least hit 2 rolls (expose and fireball) which makes it soo much worse. Scion of flame is another one of these great examples why spellcasters suck actually. Like you have to spend 1 ability point for 1 pen for EVERY DAMAGE TYPE?? (fire is obviously king just because of the ring). Just make it 1 talent for all spells like cipher. Also im not sure how you get 10.3 pen base at level 11 on fireball. I have 8.5pen on minolettas bounding missiles at level 15 (4 higher than you if what u said is true). Min. Bd. Missiles is the same spell rank and has the same base pen. Scion of flame should put you at around 9 at best. Tenacious and food are great ways to go around these things anyway but still curious. Pen food is kinda expensive early on and the good might inspirations are hard to get outside of monk. I kind of want you to show off a screen doing something similair against some of the hard encounters that actually matter... But to be fair it wouldnt change anything for me either way even if you could pull it off Most encounters that matter arent designed in a way that you can carefully set up and aoe by funneling everyone into a choke and melees are low priority. If i die its almost always to casters and/or gunners/archers. And these guys dont clump up for a 15 enemy 900 damage fireball. meh, i think i should go to sleep D: I dont think its that simple. Nobody would bother making a ton of spells and improving the effects only to make it all terrible on purpose. I think they actually believe spells are good. Im mostly just trying to convince the devs to reconsider their standpoint Also that is a really nice avatar ^_^

I mean in this specific instance you only get 1 cast because you had to set it up with expose vulnerabilities otherwise im pretty sure the 7 penetration base fireball does get penalized heavily (probably at 50% less damage at that point since its always rounded down as far as i have seen) against one of the lowest armor enemy types in the game. Kappa So your other rank 3 spell is already gone Whatever, let the thread die... Ill just stick to inhands. Theres clearly not many people who agree at this point in time. Also LUL at 900 damage packs

missile salvo targets reflex according to the wiki just as i wrote, good thing we cant easily access skill trees *hinthint*

Nah not feeling it. 80 damage isnt much at all. (The guy in the middle literally doesnt care...and show the champ skele next time ). You get 2 casts. Skeletons and ghuls generally have horrible defensive stats. Also, full custom party, base stats? But yea if you guys are fine with it. I guess theres no point in disagreeing.

aight ill give you bounding missiles thats A decent spell,not great but decent, but as i said in the initial post. 1 decent spell doesnt carry the class. (We are actually doing that one exact thing. Talking about that one good spell that you found in between all the crappy ones) at level 15 i get 8.5 penetration before buffs on bounding misslles with aloth as fighter/mage. Which is objectively terrible and pretty much not doing anything against anyone. Even after food you get 10.5 (for comparison legendary sabres at that level have 11 pen base) they dont get accuracy bonuses either (see opening post) and you get a total number of 2 casts per fight Fun fact: The missiles are one of the few spells that targets deflection (making them slightly less crappy) --> see initial post as well. all the things still apply edit2: let me give another example. I just rolled a vanilla graze auto attack (-50%dmg) with monk fist + tarns respite offhand: 21 + 4fire (chanter) + 3 (freeze weapon bonus) +3 (lightning strikes) so a full hit would have done 62 damage at 3.2 total action speed and i can do that an unlimited number of times. I mean wut? Why would i want spells for damage?

There is no spell by that name in the vanilla game. I assume you are refering to the rank 9 Spell Minolettas missile salvo or a special spell that can only be found in one of the tomes. If so please enlighten me where to find it. Either way you still only get 2 casts. You probably miss anyway because youre rolling against reflex, and whatever damage number the missile spells below rank9 in the game have is just pathetic. My auto attacks do the same amount. A character that does nothing until max level is not well designed. Btw i hit enemies for 120+dmg openers at lvl 13 and they are still above 50% hp. Maia crits fampyrs with accurate wounding shot at level 15 for 81+33fire weapon bonus+chanter passive + 18raw (and they dont really care about it actually) (at 4.8 seconds total action time attack+recovery). Ohh and some where mid ranks she also gets a bounce for 50% damage. So yea, total of somewhere around 200 damage in 1 shot. *edit: im not even sure chanter passive applied might have been pure weapon fire bonus LUL, those were the numbers i got either way Meanwhile my offensive spells cant even hit the guys (10% to hit)

playing on POTD This mostly concerns Druid,Wizard (and Priest) and only their damage (offensive) spells. Chanter and Cipher both got at least 1 acceptable spell and since both chanter and druid dont use [spells per encounter] you can just reuse that one good spell over and over without issues just like the ability classes. Spells for utility are great, spells for buffs/debuffs/healing and summons are great. Damage spells are mostly terrible. - cast time is waaaay too long (7 sec+ on some spells) - cast time is often frontloaded making the spells more likely to be interrupted which in turn makes you LOSE the spell entirely (i.e. 4-6 seconds cast 3 second recovery compared to most abilities that take about 0.5 sec, good spells in the game are all 0.5 sec casts) - many abilities get accuracy bonuses while offensive spells get none making them significantly more likely to miss - spells often target reflex or fortitude both of which are MUCH higher than deflection most of the time - there is no good way to reduce reflex or fortitude without spending MORE spells before or gimping weapons (weapon modals) while there are a ton of efficient ways to reduce deflection and all of them benefit not only your offensive spellcasters but everyone in the party - damage for many spells is too low considering how terrible offensive spells are to begin with. Weapon damage and especially weapon abilities stomp offensive spells in terms of dps. - spells dont benefit from group damage buffs like chanters +15% fire for weapon attacks or paladins shared flames of devotion ot anything else for that matter that could be achieved by multiclassing and stacking bonus damage (like soul whip + lightning strikes) - Spells are extremely limited since you only get 2 per level. So the characters that use normal resources can spend these on their best ability over and over again. With spells you only get you best ability 2 times (1 time right after you get it which is horrendous, meanwhile ability users get maximum value right when they can grab something new) - Spell penetration is (for the most part) not that good. So even if you find someone you can hit with your vs. fortitude spell, chances are he basically just shrugs them off. - For the same reason spells rely MUCH more on power level (for penetration especially). Making them worse in the early and midgame since getting top quality weapons is really really easy even early on. - Full casters have no useful passives and obviously lose a ton of inhand potential because of that. - nuking enemies is much more important than overall dps, making some of the dot spells that have a lot of damage over a long time effectively irrelevant - friendly aoe on some doesnt help either... Even if some spells have good numbers all of the other things hold them back /discuss Please exclude exploits and that one super useful damage spell in the game you found (there are a few but most druid/wizard/priest damage spells are awful because of the aforementioned reasons) Like ningauths whatever found in his special grimoire. Please consider that needing other characters or items to make an offensive caster work is effectively just gimping your party in some other regard. Suggested solutions: Give all damage spells +accuracy (A LOT like 20 or sth). This would deal with the biggest issue spellcasters currently have. Spells arent lost when the initial cast is interrupted.

eeh fair enough It was midnight and he changed the title.. meh

Seriously though, can i make this into a thread so it gets fixed? That is insanely stupid.

I didnt know plague of insects and such scales with alchemy?? of all things but that sounds a lot like an exploit and i hope it gets fixed. The vanilla spell is good enough and raw is op for obvious reasons. Im playing the lifegiver this run and the powerlevel bonus doesnt do much tbh. If i could reroll into vanilla i probably would just so i get to use shapeshift all the time. Also the healing bonus falls off instantly as soon as you leave your shapeshift. I.e. you cant cast a healing spell right before it ends and have it tick for maximum value. The moment you leave the shapeshift all currently active healing spells get penalized instantly. Also i still think wizards are the worst class is in the game. With very little going for them (mauras writhing tentacles being one of these things). Other classes are much better at armor abuse later on. That particular wizard spell just stuck out to me because you can cheese the early game really hard with it and nothing else is that early. But whatever... armor is still a pain in the ass -> back to topic.

Devotions of the faithful was nerfed in patch 1.1, now gives 10 acc. Balanced now imo. Fighter charge full attack was removed in 1.1. Charge doesnt do damage anymore only stuns. Im certain about priest and im sure the description was changed for charge. Didnt try charge after the patch tho. Make sure you look at the game notes and official patchnotes. The wiki(s) arent getting updated rn.

POTD The difficulty in the reworked encounters is good (Gorecchi street is the 1 encounter ive found that i couldnt do straight up). But not all encounters are reworked (even though there is quite a number of them, kudos for that). Just expand on the things that have been done in the mid and latergame and its perfect. I also like the concept of designing every encounter like the player has full resources. It does make it more interesting and limiting resting really doesnt do all that much except waste time for travel. If you REALLY want to rest you will always be able to rest. Only punishment is wasting time.

Mirke > Ydwin

I am talking about stacking armor yourself is op^ . Its very easy to get to70% damage mitig and just steamrolling difficult encounters because you are literally invincible. Anyway, yes POTD is supposed to be hard. Thing is Pen juggling (i.e. min maxing pen alongside other damage stats) isnt hard, its just a major pain in the ass.

They are never mentioned again. Youre welcome.

Cipher has some of the best spells in the game all at minimal cast time and gives 20% damage increase to autos starting at like level1. u wot m8? Pets are there to set up flanking not tank or anything else. Maias bird in particularly is amazing (in every regard really) for the bouncing damage rank3 cipher spell since he cant be engaged and you can always get optimal angles. You can restealth in combat with escape or the shadow cloud thing

The whole armor system is pretty much ResidentSleeper. Especially on POTD. Stacking armor, especially when using some spells like the RANK1??? wizard spell that gives +3 for 60seconds+ is too good too fast. If you overcap enemy pen by 3 points you literally become invincible. Its pretty stupid. Meanwhile if you dont go over pen, armor does nothing. Literally nothing. On the other hand the game basically forces you to gear up really early (i have seen guys with 10 armor regularly even early on), makes low pen weapons effectively useless (e.g. Greatswords) and while you technically CAN reduce armor through other means, there really arent that many good spells/abilities for doing that in the game. Basically just the Chanter spell at rank 3 and the Cipher spell later on. Theres a rank 7??? druid spell that does it as well i mean WUT? rank 7? reduce by 2? can miss?? limited duration? Or you know... you could just get a mace with the mace weapon ability instead of spending your rank 7 spell... There is also absolutely no payoff for stacking penetration since getting twice the enemies armor in penetration is pretty much impossible on POTD (maybe some random instakill trash like the devoted slaves idk) and even if it was theoretically possible it gives 30%?? bonus damage? What this means is you always want to have your penetration exactly equal to the enemies armor since you probably pay somewhere else with stats/abilities otherwise. Why not just make armor give a consistent %damage reduction that is reasonable (not 70% instantly for 3 points over pen). The breakpoint is extremely annoying to play around and on the defensive end makes characters invincible way too fast. While it has no impact at all before going over that breakpoint as long as you dont run around i a shirt. (And even then its only 30% bonus damage...)

I don't think this is the case, because that also happens between e.g. Classic and Veteran. The specific difference in PotD is the enemy stats. No he is correct. Since Patch 1.1 POTD has enemies added. And some of the early game encounters are brutal. (Im looking at the boars + drake + panthers in particular... you know which ones.) (probably have to start a new game so they show up^)

Yep, Sailed to crookspur for the 2H helmet (which was nerfed btw for some reason). Found a legendary sabre and a legendary armor in the crate right next to the vendor (stealth 10, stolen at midday). Not sure if happy or ResidentSleeper Enjoy it for solo runs. I guess stomping POTD will basically be free now.

Or they could just make it so you dont get unlimited rests anymore... Just like in the first game. 2 rests max after leaving the ship. Rest limit resets back to max everytime you visit the ship.

^The Falcons Helm is sold in crookspur by a merchant on the beach. (literally named merchant if i remember correctly) Id say "Tarns Respite" is the best weapon in the game. Paired with any other 1H for dual wielding. You can get it immediately after leaving Ma Jae, it requires no fighting at all. +1flat pen +10%dmg sabre +20% freeze dmg stacking debuff -1 deflect on hit ^WITHOUT ANY ENCHANTS! This is the vanilla item you get! You get it from a tiny quest given by the "mad" pirate in neketaka (no spoilers right?!)