Pigeonheart

Is pointing out the public release of the roadmap for the DLC a spoiler?

The sheer number of fleshy body parts clogging up the old city ruins makes me wonder. Are hundreds of criminals being thrown down there every month? With that kind of attrition rate why are they still starving? Was it just art direction that filled the old city with so many still fleshy body parts? Biha mentions a better life in her village, yes. She also mentions a desire for the Mataru to drive the criminals and foreigners out of Neketaka, blaming them at least in part for making the prize share system less effective. You are strongly encouraged to take Tekehu on this mission to see just how ignorant most Mataru are of how bad the roparu in Neketaka have it. Aruihi and Onekaza II are young, they inherited this problem along with many others. My beef with Onekaza is her treatment of the Wahaki. Ignoring the slavers raiding them when it suited her (they weren't lining up to live under her rule why should she help?) then sending a stranger out to demand fealty and soldiers. If you come back without a treaty, even if you freed the slaves you take a big reputation hit with the Huana. She is a spiteful ....

Enoi mentions the roparu were doing pretty good in Neketaka before the gullet came to be in its present situation thanks to the 'natural disaster' that collapsed the middle of the mountain. The jab that no one higher up the chain has really stepped up to help since then has more than a whiff of New Orleans to it. Numerous times its hinted that the more the Huana have tried to emulate the foreign powers invading them, the more **** the gods have heaped upon them. Almost like they are specifically being prevented from returning to their former strength. Is Ondra responsible for the Gullet's current condition as Dereo suggests? Biha blames the foreigners for much of the roparu's troubles since they bring crime and reduce the available prize share for the Huana. When you arrange a better prize share for them or smuggle in more food, are you just accounting for a mess foreign interference has created? Its fine to hate the Huana faction but its silly to think their issues are entirely of their own making. I can certainly see the appeal some people find in breaking them of their bondage to the Engwithan gods and returning Ukaizo to them.

My minstalker was assassin/beguiler. I played him as an old vailian with the clergy background as though he was a hiding villain in a musketeers film. I Chose the dove dialogue options when in polite company and the shady options every other time. Most people thought I was a really nice guy but the more astute could tell there was something off. This let me twist xoti up into knots and feel less terrible about a 'romance' with her. The ending slides where a confused mess though with her light hearted and long lasting friendship with Eder coinciding with her boxes of dead animals and her devoted letters to me. At first I went melee, expecting to use the hood reward from Aldys with the Bardatto rapier and Rust's stiletto. I instantly took aggro from anything I went near and was dying too fast in light armor (and that assassin penalty). It was still a nice combo to have when something isolated got near and the hood still did nice things for ranged, but I went for the 50% no recovery on crit bow(s) instead. I don't know if the assassin's from stealth accuracy bonus does apply to cipher spells but I never had any trouble landing whispers of treason on even very high will enemies when using it as a cheese stealth alpha strike vs large crowds (instead of opening with damage). Sneak attack bonus damage plus biting whip was more than enough of a focus gain with the beguiler return to always have enough focus to keep my debuffs and buff up or drop a string of whispers of treason. I did not pick any of the bonus focus passives, but I did take the penetration boosts. My damage came from sneak attack bow shots etc, not cipher spells. Everything on screen was always flanked and frightened, I always had the accuracy buff and deathblows was always up. I had 2680 crits by the time I reached Ondra's Spire but had only done 107106 damage (I did more with Maia in one playthrough!). I pretty much left him on a custom AI setting I was constantly editing and he was always debuffing rather than shooting. My swashbuckler Eder was benefiting just as much from my debuffs, putting in 104955 sword and board damage! If I replay him to try a better ending I will definitely try Trickster out just so I can give melee a better crack. I just can never make streetfighter work for me if I'm standing around in my skivvies. Its kind of hard to look the part of a Monk/Clergy in armor. Maybe we'll get a visible appearance slot option in the future. https://i.imgur.com/Nr8pH3g.png

I do wonder how much if any effect the Huana tablet in Arkemyr's basement and the rubbing/brass map from Motare o Kōzi actaully matter. Is there anything of significance to these both being Hauana/Rauatai exclusive? In my Vailian run I was really saddened to face off against Aldys. Does the VTC leader effect your end game mission? If I don't support Castol will I still be prompted to teleport into the RDC stores even though the replacement VTC leader has no confidence in that technology?

I think its since 1.1 that you can set up ai behaviour for weapon modals, equip the weapon you want to always have a modal on for, open the ai panel and copy one of the ai behaviours you're using if not already using a custom one. At the bottom add a check for melee (if the weapon is melee) or ranged and then select the modal to activate if this condition is met. Example- if you have a war bow equipped while setting this up, you can select the Long Draw modal if its been picked in character level up under a ranged weapon check. Might like to add a second or 5 in the duration between checks box. Make sure this new/edited ai behaviour is selected in your characters ai panel. Continued example- if your character switches to a ranged weapon, in combat it will run the check and if its a war bow it will activate long draw automatically. The side effect is it will always do this when the conditions are met, manually turning it off isn't really an option unless you either set a really long delay between checks on this behaviour step or turn off the custom/edited ai in your characters ai panel.

The Vailian ending is my preferred ending too, but not because of some rose tinted outcome outlined in the epilogue slides. The game gives you a few instances to bring up that they are ultimately using souls to fuel their technological advances, and this is usually brushed off as a simpleton's understanding of the issue without much defence beyond 'poo-pooing'. As an inequal society chasing profit I really hope they become dependant on adra fuel for everything, industry, lifestyle, transport. I want to see what happens when their use of souls outstrips supply and what happens when more than just a regional zone begins to experience Waidwen's Legacy like symptoms. Giving any faction control of the wheel is certainly interesting. If you had that kind of power would you be inclined to preferentially supply strong (or even just available) souls to your faction? What if they discover Thaos like immortality... who gets access to that?

I don't know that the random encounter 'backlog' is just tied to Neketaka. I have had the sudden rush of Neketaka encounters very late in the game as others have mentioned here, cleaning up leftover quests after visiting Magran's Teeth, I got few in a row. Something similar seems to happen with the ship board random events too. In my first completed playthrough, just as I was finishing up the north west area for Sanza's Mapping the Archipelago quest, which requires having sailed and explored every island on the map, while sailing back towards Neketaka I was invited by Luca up on deck to introduce myself to my crew because for the majority of our time together, I had been asleep... Thanks Luca, I guess I was sleepwalking through all those conquered vessels that had my entire crew at 4 star ranking.