pblack476

I have reinstalled it and will see if it lives up to the hype in my memory.

Gald to be asked that... no one seems to take an interest when I mention that game. Of all the isometric cRPGs out there I feel this one has the best D&D ruleset implementation of them all. Turn-based (done right) feels great. And the 3.5 rules are complex enough to give a good amount of replayability to the game, even if the campaign is quite restricted in its storyline. But what gets me on that game is that there are very few generic encounters. Every combat seems to be very well balanced and feels very challenging without seeming like the developer just threw "more minions" at you for the sake of difficulty. You cannot always choose how to approach them and that is also great, makes it feel more like a well thought out campaign than a cRPG. Finally I like the fact that there are a lot of companions available AND a lot of overlap between them. So I have once ran a game with a party full of rogues only, and the game did not break. Some encounters were a LOT harder but nothing was undoable. The game makes you feel like you can control the difficulty really well by your choices, and at least for me, I did not believe I could break the game with any choices I made. The restricted nature of this closed campaign gives you a perfect balance, if not in a small world. But that is allright, because at the end of the day what matters most in a game is how much fun you can have, and for how long. Don't know if I could get into it nowadays. It has a rather slow paced feel and a slow paced beginning section that I remember all too well doing tens of times over while settling for a specific build. But it just feels amazing to enter an encounter that you know is hard and get an appropriate reward for it (Hill Giants right out of the first town feels like a boss and is probably the most memorable encounter in any game I have ever faced, even if there is nothing special about it, it makes you REALLY use your arsenal of low level abilities to beat it with just the right amount of RNG to make things exciting without being frustrating). EDIT: All of the above apply using the CO8 Modpack of course. I have never played it without it.

I wouldn't say wrong genre. I mean... Everything mentioned was in perfect balance in a game like the BG series. And that is as close to the same genre as I can possibly conceive to Deadfire. It was a design choice that I happened not to enjoy. Actually, every other isometric cRPG I've played had this in check, it is just Deadfire that made it different. For reference, I still believe the best isometric cRPG to date is Temple of Elemental Evil. And my mistake was comparing the two games. I get that Deadfire is a different beast. But far from a different genre.

Different players have different preferences you know. It is a game after all and there is no wrong way of enjoying it. Some people like story mode, others hardcore mode, some like min-maxing, some don't care for it. There is no "wrong approach" the way I see it. And I am fine admitting that the game has not been fun for me with my approach. Some games lend themselves better to this sort of thing, and Deadfire just hapenned to be the worst yet at it. As I said before... feels like a design choice, not really a flaw or mistake. And it just ain't my cup of tea. But hey! Been playing Deadly Deadfire with harder economy mods and so far.... so good. Challenge is way up... I actually HAVE to use sneak to avoid some sections depending on what I wanna acomplish, leveling is slower so skills are slower and therefore I can't just run out and steal a bunch end game gear from merchants right away, naval combat is just a tiny bit harder enough to make you wonder if you should actually enter it and money is tighter so purchases matter more.

LOL. I mean it all in a good sense. I am sure I will give the game another shot later on after the burnout fades. Maybe slowing down XP gain could improve the experience. But my main complain really is about equipment and resources. Being a thorough player means that after visiting dunnage and neketaka with high mechanics & stealth there is enough money, enchanting supplies and powerful items to go around. By that time you are likely to have at least a few end game weapons, armor and accessories. It feels great at first you know... "hell yeah, fully upgraded crit machine by level 10" (minus skills) But what is there to look forward to after that? I say that of course being a "build fiend" type of player and once I get my build going, it starts to become less interesting. And I guess that is a design choice the devs made that is just not suitable for my playstyle preferences. I probably sank 400+ hours into skyrim and never finished the main quest because I always set a goal for my character and once that was done, merely completing quests became a chore. And the thing is that this time comes waaay too soon in Deadfire. But I love the theme and I tried playing Baldur's Gate again only to find that Deadfire ruined the graphics of those games forever for me. So I am sure I will eventually give it another go. It is a shame no more patches are coming out (while Baldur's Gate is STILL getting them with patch 2.6 by the way) because modding in Deadfire seems to only go so far as it is quite a lot more complex than in Infinity engine games, even if the engine itself allows for more. I was happy modding IE games to my taste but it really becomes a task outside of my league doing it in Deadfire.

So, yeah. I tried hard to love this game. And there is much it got right: My first impression was amazing, it truly felt like the natural evolution of Baldur's Gate. The Storytelling bits with skill checks are IMO the best translation of a real tabletop RPG feel to a cRPG. You can tell the developers really tried to make a better successor to the BG games. And I think they came really close. But the game just bored me out really fast. Faster than any game before it. It is easy.... painfully easy to get great equipment (just max mechanics and stealth and you may grab most stuff you want). Money is easy, therefore upgrades are easy. I really like hunting for equipment and by the time I reach Neketaka, which is THE FIRST PLACE YOU GO TO OUTSIDE OF PORT MAJE... there is nothing in the game that I could possibly want anymore. From then on it is just a grind to get the XP (that is painfully easy to obtain as well) and YAY! You get to use some cool high level skills. I don't want to drag anymore than what I already did. But it is a shame, I feel very saddened to abandon this game. Pirate theme is very cool and SO MUCH was done right. But it just was not for me, and I wish I hadn't sinked 115 hours trying to create cool characters on it. EDIT: After a few days playing with Deadly Deadfire and Harder Economy (50% less gold from sales) mods with upward upscaling only, I found the game to be truly fun to play. Every encounter matters, strategy counts, gold does not come quick. Found myself spending already more hours on this one playthough than the last 5 combined, and I am yet to leave Neketaka. It made PoE GReAt AgAin!

So, after a lot of fiddling with multiple builds I decided I could not bear playing just ONE character I wanted and instead chose to play a custom party of 5 hired adventurers and... ...It just made the game SO MUCH EASIER that I wonder if it is going to be fun. Now I have (in TB mode): 1. a 100% boring AF Unbroken/Shieldbearer crusader with spear and board for maximum engagements and lots of HP. Moon Godlike as well for auto-healing boost. 2. My Death Godlike Sharpshooter/Assassin for DPS 3. a Nature godlike SingleClass Lifegiver for AoE and Healing 4. a Beguiler/Trickster for Debuffing and CC And that party just made short work of fights that I once had to really think about. I am on PotD and while I cannot just mindlessly attack, I got really worried about the steep decrease in difficulty. Everyone is great at what they do and I wonder if the game was balanced a LOT around companions. Does anyone else find this to be true? Or did I just set up a really great team and kinda broke the game by doing so?

I would specifically be interested in seeing how the bonus to critical hits was applied to Streetfighters and I would like to add a bonus to a class while invisible and could learn from studying the implementation of the Streetfighter's bonuses while Flanked.

Hello, I am very new to modding and would appreciate some guidance: I have the intention of giving a class a passive trait that increases the power level and/or increases "Hit to Crit" only while the character is invisible. No matter the source. So I don't want a spell to do that, I want a generic passive trait. I have figured out that I might need to do something to "StatusEffectType" to get those effects but cannot figure out how to apply that exclusively while the character is invisible (note that it is INVISIBLE, and not applied while STEALTHED). Alternatively, I could also consider a DEBUFF while visible and the removal of that debuff when invisible, but for that I need to know if I can set "PowerLevel" to a negative Value. And secondly, I would like to change the class description to reflect the achieved effect after I've done the changes. Thank you all for the support.