jtbehnke

Here's the text from the PDF: Winemaking Though grapes are unknown in Eora, many kith make wine from rice. Winemaking involves the cultivation of rice, its fermentation, and the subsequent development into rice wine. Note that wines do not typically stay potable for more than a year once the process has been completed (Sawyer 25). Um...rice doesn't come from vineyards, it comes from paddies.

Something in the lore of the setting has been bugging me lately: the types of wines available in Eora. According to the Pen & Paper draft provided with some pre-orders and to backers, in its entry for the Winemaking skill, grapes are unknown in Eora, so all available wines are rice-based. I thought this was a nice touch, a great way to emphasize how the game's world is different from our own. However, as I played the games I began to notice references to wines of a different color. Some wine racks in various taverns would mention red wines in the descriptions you got when you clicked on them. Captain Mad Morena's hair is described as "tresses that gleam like red wine in the low light." The alcoholic clerk you can recruit as a crew member, Luca, has clothes "stained with faded, purple droplets" due to his wine habit. This raises A LOT of questions, to say the least. Do purple or red rice wines exist in real life? If not, then what would these wines being described be made of? Is this just an oversight or miscommunication on the part of the writers? Am I overthinking this?! What do you all think?

Hey, if there are Valian trading posts in the White that Wends, does that mean it'd make sense for there to be mountain dwarves from there? Or would boreal dwarves make more sense, as it's their second-largest population outside of Naasitaq? I got an idea to make a hired-adventurer as a friend of my pale elf cipher, who helped her leave the Land and make her way to the Dyrwood, and I'm not sure if I should make them a dwarf or an ocean folk...

I "got this" from Yoda's speech in The Empire Strikes Back that I linked in the OP: "For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship." Yes, Monk would be pretty sweet, but I was looking more to take my initial character who was a Cipher in PoE1 and add a spiritual dimension to them that would synergize well with the Mystic background and make her more distinct from Ydwin, while not stealing Vatnir's thunder by being a priest either. I understand it may not synergize well, but it DOES seem cool, especially given the multiclass name is Oracle, which makes sense given the Mystic background can have visions from time to time. The Green Knight actually was part of the inspiration for this concept! This is really helpful, thank you! And nice one with the Orlan "Yoda!"

Thank you for the suggestion, though as I said before, I compared my concept to the Jedi in a spiritual sense of being connected to all living things. I'm not necessarily looking to emulate the Jedi's acrobatics and force stuff. I think I WILL use your suggestion to build Rekke with when I get him, though. That DOES sound cool!

So in theory you still CAN look like that, but only temporarily?

Slightly off topic, but Serafen makes a similar wonderful reaction to the adra dragon.Pardon?! She shows up in Deadfire if you spared her in the first game? I know she joined the Principi but she actually makes an appearance as her dragon self?!Oh no no no! Sorry! I didn't mean to mislead. The end boss dragon is this mechanical adra looking thing. That's what I was referring to. Not the master below. Oh, the Guardian of Ukaizo? Okay!

WHOOOOOA, SHINY! How'd ya DO that, Boeroer?

Slightly off topic, but Serafen makes a similar wonderful reaction to the adra dragon. Pardon?! She shows up in Deadfire if you spared her in the first game? I know she joined the Principi but she actually makes an appearance as her dragon self?!

I watched a vid with some of the party comments and his reaction to the dragon getting back up was gold: "Really?! Sss****!" My thoughts exactly, Konstanten. My thoughts exactly...

WHOA! I didn't know there were Valians there! Cool! Or cold, as the case may be!

My understanding is that Ciphers are good at crowd control. From what I've seen in the first game at least, that's very true, with Whisper of Treason and Puppet Master having been lifesavers in some of the tougher fights I've been in. Though I don't know how much has changed in Deadfire. Like I said in the OP, I was planning on using Cipher stuff to cover the offensive aspects of the character, and the Lifegiver stuff would cover my defenses and keep me alive. Secret Horrors DOES sound like it'd be useful. How many points do I have to work with throughout the game anyway?

I see...I'm not exactly sure how to process that into roleplaying...I do want to be Benevolent and Honest, but I'm not sure where to go from there...It sounds like living in a place like the Land makes you Stoic too, needing to put up with the climate and Rymrgand's oppressive presence in their lives...

Well, I would...like I said I don't know what I'm doing...I just sort of pulled the Cipher stuff from a different build that used Cipher but had a different multiclass (Mindstalker, I think, but I'd have to double check).

Seconded!

Or you could, you know, sacrifice her to Skaen. Or just outright kill her/have her die during a fight if you're anti-Skaen. I mean she IS a murderer after all. I am indeed anti-Skaen, and believe me, the fact that nearly all builds on this forum use some version of Effigy's Resentment kind of upsets me, but that's my personal opinion. She is a murderer, yeah, but it feels...tacky...to be the icing on the crap cake that is her life just so I can get a nice suit of armor made out of her literal corpse. People tend to want characters that are as strong in PotD as possible. I actually have a few custom backgrounds based upon what alignments I want my characters to generally be... but I will also generally sacrifice Durance for some extra health. It does help... Yeah, my point was that missing the Effigy's Resentment isn't going to render a build useless, and if it does then the build probably wasn't very stable to begin with. That's actually very reassuring. Thank you! Here's sort of a skeleton of a build, drawn from other threads on the forum 1. Iron Will/Nature's Vigor 2. Draining Whip/Light of the Moon 3. Hammering Thoughts/Nature's Balm 4. Body Attunement/Moonwell 5. Borrowed Instinct, Ringleader/Plague of Insects 6. Amplified Wave, Disintegrate/Garden of Life 7. Echoing Horror/Nature's Bounty Am I on the right track here? I fully admit I don't know what I'm doing.

That is correct, however the ending she gets if you do that has her continue murdering people, growing frustrated at the futility of it until finally she's cornered in a village and literally ripped apart screaming even though she isn't feeling any pain, at which point her remnants are collected to make that breastplate. *shudder* I wouldn't wish that kind of emotional torment on anyone, not even a murderer. I was thinking Magnera's Chain or something like that would work okay instead, plus I just learned that it WASN'T historically inaccurate to have a metal helmet with non-metal armor, so that opens up more possibilities!

True, but wouldn't that fail her quest? I don't like failing quests...

Or you could, you know, sacrifice her to Skaen. Or just outright kill her/have her die during a fight if you're anti-Skaen. I mean she IS a murderer after all. I am indeed anti-Skaen, and believe me, the fact that nearly all builds on this forum use some version of Effigy's Resentment kind of upsets me, but that's my personal opinion. She is a murderer, yeah, but it feels...tacky...to be the icing on the crap cake that is her life just so I can get a nice suit of armor made out of her literal corpse.

Could you please share some of that lore here? I'm making a Pale Elf Watcher of my own and would be keenly interested in information I can use to roleplay her properly!

Bit of an unrelated question: as I've mentioned on other threads, I really care deeply about my character's "fashion," being interested in creating a unified, stylish look for my character and I'm struggling to decide how to go about that in Deadfire. Especially since I won't have access to certain items in the game like the Devil of Caroc's Breastplate (since in order to have access to that, you have to lie to her and in doing so condemn more innocent people to die by her hand before she's finally killed), I'm unsure just WHAT to wear. I know this isn't D&D, so a Druid CAN wear metal armor without penalty, but it still feels like "cheating" somehow, but on the flipside, I find the hide armors available to be incredibly ugly. And if I were to wear something like leather armor, it wouldn't make much sense to wear a metal helmet like the Helm of the Falcon, or wield a two-handed weapon, which isn't historically accurate (if you're a medieval knight, or a viking raider or a landsknecht, you at least wore chain, and possibly later full plate or a breastplate the closer you get to the modern era). And if I want to wear leather, then I'm not sure what hat to wear, since I'm not wanting to wear any of the pirate hats... So what do you folks say? Am I overthinking this? I thought maybe I would wear Magnera's Chain, though I don't know how well that matches the Helm of the Falcon, made of bronze rather than steel, so I might go for Okura's Kettle instead, even if it isn't better, since it may match the Chain better, and I don't want to wear The Bloody Links because it looks gross, like you don't bother to take care of the armor, and probably would look better if I was playing a psycho with Distraho.

There IS one arbalest of note in Deadfire: Spearcaster. It's pretty solid too. You can buy it from Marihi, in Neketaka.

The Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer and the Company Captain's Cap are both very potent soulbound items.

I hadn't really planned on going for it since I'd heard it can't be upgraded very much anyway. The Jedi comparison was more regarding the spiritual aspect and mental powers rather than the iconic weapon.

Hmmm...I do LIKE Ascendant, if only because of the cool name, but I was under the impression that Lifegivers avoided spiritshifting too often due to the penalties they take when changing back, and I wanted to use a cool sword like Modwyr or the Whispers of the Endless Paths. That was sort of the impression I got from Druid in general. You either go all in on spiritshifting kinda like this joke... ...or you ignored it and focused on spellcasting and occasionally hitting things with a stick (like the Greenstone Staff in PoE1 or the Spine of Thicket Green in Deadfire).