Father Jyrgunkarrd

Necro'd as I play through Deadfire again: Answer to question: No. Literally every faction has poverty and a deeply red ledger. "PILES OF BODIES!" is not a good criticism when talking about the nation states in question because literally every one of them has piles and piles and piles of bodies they are resting on top of - it's just that Neketara's pile of bodies is literal and right in front of you instead of spread across the archipelago and woven into shipwrecks. The critiques of Aeldys in the thread are just priceless to me given that everyone seems to fundamentally agree with her outlook: that every one of the nation states in question is bad, has bad leadership and are hopelessly corrupt. Like, literally everyone in this thread agrees with that axiom. But somehow Aeldys is bad because she says it outright and acts on it? The RDC is straight-up fascist. Like, even if one sets aside that they are clearly modeled after fascist-Imperial WWII Japan and agrees with the utilitarian arguments (utilitarianism is a bankrupt ethics philosophy that nobody whose gone beyond philosophy 101 believes has any merit at all, but ANYWAY), there is a fash dude you meet in the Brass Citadel that explains both explicitly and implicitly that he has hijacked the RDC's political death machine for personal gain & racist ends. So it doesn't matter what merits the machine might or might not have in a dispassionate sense, because they have lost control of it to demagogues & corruption. Because of course they would. That's what always happens with such state machinery in the end. Like, just consider for a moment the long list of people that are just never going to be on the political-assassination-for-the-greater-good list, and why they are never going to be on it (hint: it will have nothing to do with outcomes and everything to do with their political power). The VTC is a pretty blunt and obvious critique of capitalism and how it is unable to reconcile its practices with existential dangers. In this plot, Adra Pillars are a barely veiled metaphor for climate change. Honestly, the only right answer here is just to say **** it and go listen to poetry in the Wild Mare until doomsday comes, because adventure & literature is probably the only thing in the world worth preserving.

Thanks!

...May I ask why Whispers of the Endless Path is considered to be so powerful? I'm just looking at the on-paper options for my Greatsword wielder and the Internet insists that this is one of the best options, if not THE best option... but the stats look fairly bad? What hidden quality am I not seeing?

i was thinking about trying melee ascendant - but those 3pl ascended wont make even 1 pen - and soulblade can do 3x amplified without problem, then bam bam few attacks and again - when comes to lower level shred skills, she can spam some even more than ascendant, if you chose to - f.e. soul shock 5 focus - and has free almost perma concentration, and almost perma 20 perc weapon damage - seems winner - not only because soul blade my problem is, that assassin brings nothing seems - guile cost of being hidden is simply too much - and setting up circumstances for good backstab makes usually rest of party without any management far too long, and it often fails - if mobs are moving etc. Assassinating mages is fun but pointless, because trickster with escape wrecks them easily without stealth (arguably easier, because you have to be fast, until they cast their buffs, so quickly escape bam bam done) I'm using her as a tank & crowd control source, though, not a DPS source. There's an interesting sort-of synergy where she spends the first part of most engagements building-up her Focus & Heating-Up bonus on the front, then when the opponents start to drop she can very quickly shoot-off some ascended psychic attacks, pop smoke & delete someone with a Finishing Blow. I also have a Soulblade / Bleakwalker for DPS, but it honestly doesn't even feel like a Cipher because the only Cipher ability she ever uses is Soul Annihilation. It certainly works just fine, but it is not what at all comes to mind when I think of the Cipher class.

I've been very impressed with my Ascendant / Street Fighter using dual hatchets, picking-up mostly just the Cipher skills with a 0.5 cast time.

I don't know if this is just me, but I have been unimpressed with armor in both Pillars 1 & 2. Tanking the numbers of actions a character can take in a given span of time seems like a bad trade in exchange for improved Deflection? So I've just been using Clothing and... well, it just seems at face value to be much more optimal? Are there good ways of exploiting the heavier armor pieces?

That's the one.

Most certainly not the most optimal dual gun build ever, but I've been having fun with a Bleak Walker Palladin / Vanilla Barbarian pistol build. Flames of Devotion + Fury is just a very potent early set-up. No doubt that Blunderbuss would be better, but pistols allow you to engage from a comfortable distance while quoting Dirty Harry & naming your character Wessen Smith.