Vasvary5050

Hi folks. Two quick questions. I've got to go away for a week soon (for work), which sucks, and I won't have access to a PC or laptop during that week, but someone is going to lend me their Steam Deck. Has anyone here tried playing Deadfire on the Steam Deck? And my follow up question, does anyone know any other good CRPGs (RtWP or TB) that play well on the Steam Deck. Just need something to keep my occupied and sane in the evenings in the hotel. Best wishes, Vas.

Is your full Deadfire guide online? If so, I may have used it without realising it was yours. For me, the cooldowns remind me of playing MMORPGs like world of Warcraft. You know, I'd forgotten about those spells. I played BG1 and BG2 back when they were new, and loved them, which was why I was very happy when developers started making RTwP CRPGs again. You're making me quite nostalgic and I'm tempting to go back and try them again. That said, whilst my formative years of Tabletop RPG-ing were with second edition AD&D, the shine on that system has worn off for me now. I've got too hooked on the multi-classing from 3.5 edition D&D and Pathfinder (and even better, in Deadfire). Still, I'm running out of CRPGs to play, so I might install BG2 again. I'm going to persevere with Tyranny just to experience this at least once. Yeah, this makes me sad, but I did in the end accept that being a mage MC is the way to go. I will check out the link and compare it to my current MC. This makes me sad. From a roleplay perspective, I want to stick with Barik and Verse, as I find them and the Disfavoured and Scarlet Chorus rivalry interesting and would like to see it playout. Also, I like mixed parties in these sort of games, usually with a mixture of brutes, rogues, wizards, priests, etc. But I think having at least 3 lore-focused mages is the way to go with Tyranny. I wish there were more of these in CRPGs. To add to the ones you mention, Pathfinder has Tenebrous Depths. I know some people don't like them, but I'd love a mega-dungeon DLC for Deadfire, just something I can use to build a new party from scratch and run it through. I guess the nearest thing in Deadfire is the SSS DLC which gives a lot of optional repeatable arenas and relic hunts.

Hi folks. This one is slightly off topic as its a bit more about Tyranny than Deadfire, but it does sort of relate to my experience with Tyranny compared to Deadfire. Yesterday I thought I'd give Tyranny a go having recently completed Deadfire for my third time, and I really don't like it (yet). It's not the story, or different world, or the main narrative arc being evil, that bothers me (those are all fine, and I would be very happy to play through the Tyranny story multiple times if it was using Deadfire's mechanics, classes and engine). I'm not saying Tyranny is bad, and I'm struggling to put my finger on why exactly it isn't quite working for me (but I'll try to articulate it): I think my biggest problem is that I'm finding it really hard to put together an even vaguely synergistic party in Tyranny. I think my main problems are: 1) Rather than having a limited number of spells or ability points per encounter, abilities in Tyranny have really huge cooldowns. I've currently got 2 mage characters (MC + Lantry) and 2 mostly physical characters with small amounts of magic (Barik and Verse). I'm finding that the 2 non-mages are spending most of their time using auto-attacks between their few abilities, and it feels dull, and as if they are not contributing much. The mages have a lot of spell (sigil) combinations, and can be casting spells a lot, and feel quite OP, which makes it feel like a game for mages only (if I could create/hire completely custom characters like you can in Deadfire, I'd probably just have 4 mages investing heavily into Lore). Admittedly I'm not far into Tyranny yet and it could be that this smooths out. 2) I like the spell crafting in Tyranny, but I'm not sure it is superior to Deadfire's more interesting mixture of spells, abilities, ciphers, chants; and beyond the spell crafting, the combat feels a bit one dimensional. To be honest, even the spell crafting gets a bit repetitive. A question to people who have played both; I'm I missing something? Does it get better. I mean, it's certainly challenging in places, like the ambush at Tripnettle Wilderness (my party has been rinsed a few times and I'm not even playing on POTD yet), but it's just not quite floating my boat. With the classes and multi-class characters in Deadfire, a lot of my time was spent looking for synergistic ways to construct my party, but I just can't see how to do that in Tyranny. On a more concrete level, I'm interested to hear what builds people have used for their main character in Tyranny and which companions they preferred. I ended up re-rolling my main character a few times and settled on pure mage, not because I wanted to play a mage (I find pure mages a bit dull), but because it feels like this is what the game was built around. I'm interested in Verse and Barik as characters, but find their talent trees and abilities to be dull. (And apologies if this is just a bit too off topic for this forum, but I am interested to hear what my fellow residents of Eora who have also travelled to Tyranny think). Best wishes, Vas.

It looks a lot like Skyrim to me, but with a more vibrant colour palette (so perhaps a bit like Outer Worlds), and set in the Pillars universe. None of which is a bad thing, especially if they make it highly mod-able like Skyrim, though I hope the combat is less wonky than base-Skyrim. I just hope that (a) they have a class system that is at least as diverse as Deadfire's (i.e. all the classes and multiclass combinations of Deadfire), and that the lore, setting and ambiance feels like proper Deadfire (also, whilst I'm happy for their to be humour in it, I hope they don't lean into that side of things as much as they did with Outer Worlds). It could be amazing, though I'm a little sceptical (it wouldn't surprise me if they scale back a lot of the class/multi-class complexity of Deadfire).

None of the DLCs are absolutely required, and there are a lot of them, but some of them add really good and/or important functionality and extra stories. Some add extra layers to the alliance systems, or espionage systems, etc, or entire story lines. Others just add extra species packs (in some cases 100% cosmetic, or 99% cosmetic but with an extra trait or two you can pick for your empire, which is pretty minor). That said, even the basic game (without DLCs) has a lot to it, and it probably makes sense to just buy the basic game, play that, and decide if you like it. My first game of Stellaris took about 150 hours. Since then I've played dozens of games of Stellaris, ranging from some I've completed in a long weekend, to others that have taken 50+ hours. The first game was the most magical because I was figuring stuff out, and a lot of events that happened - some very random, others scripted - felt just incredible (and that was just the base game with a couple of DLCs that were bundled together on sale). With Stellaris, I would always recommend buying the DLCs on sale as they go on sale a lot. The DLCs that I think are the most important are: Nemesis, Apocalypse, Horizon Signal, Utopia, Megacorp, Synthetic Dawn, Federations. (I haven't bought Galactic Paragons yet so I can't comment on that one). The following are either entirely cosmetic, or mostly cosmetic with the option to play a few new species which isn't so important for your first game or two: Aquatics, Plantoids, Humanoids Species pack, Lithoids Species Pack (actually this one is pretty good, offering some unique Lithoid traits that are a bit more than just cosmetic), Necroids (same comment as for Lithoids), Toxoids (I haven't bought this one so I don't know much about it but probably mostly cosmetic). If you like it, you'll probably get a good 50-100 hours out of the base game before you feel you need to start buying DLCs, so maybe just buy the game without DLCs when its next on sale to see what you think. Note: the AI is not great, and it is a game about micromanagement (IMHO) as much as it is about grand strategy and emergent stories. It's also RTwP rather than TB!

Obsidian must have heard you! They just posted an official gameplay trailer video for Avowed a few hours ago (I just saw it now!)

I'm usually not too fussed about achievements (a lot of games have really obscure achievements that aren't worth the hassle), but Deadfire's are pretty easy to hoover up. I just have Making Waves (the Huana ending) and Archivist of Kazuwari (the optional artefact hunts in SSS) left to collect, and I'm currently finishing off the Archivist one (some of the optional SSS fights from hunting the artefacts are good fun). Thanks for this. Those rating are really useful as I don't want to make my next run too too difficult. Just looking for a nice challenge on top of vanilla POTD upscale. The Eothas one sounds good from a roleplay perspective. The Magran one sounds like a nightmare for someone like me (I pause A LOT, use minimal scripting, and micro-manage fights intensively). Your suggestion of berath, eothas, and galawain sounds sensible. I like the idea of doing Hylea's Challenge, but I think it might be a nightmare. Maybe I'll do a berath+eothas+galawain challenge run, and then a hylea-only challenge run. You are right. Camellia telegraphed her disturbed personality a lot more obviously though from the start. Yeah, 6 does seem like the perfect number (probably because of playing BG1/2, IWD1/2 and PoE1), though after hundreds of hours playing Deadfire I've got used to 5. I had a similar experience and I wasn't even playing on unfair difficulty. I nearly abandoned the game because I got fed up manually re-applying all the buffs until I found a mod that allowed me to automate the buffing (one button to get all the buff spells cast). I come from a D&D background originally (pen and paper though not for a long time, and the IWD/BG games, but I was never a huge fan of the AC system (heavy armour making you harder "to hit" is a bit silly), or the limited number of casts per rest (i.e., resting every 5 minutes to re-memorise spells). The latter is okay in pen and paper sessions, but not so fun in a computer game (IMO). Shame Yeah, I just watched a YT for it, and it looks like the combat is TB. Not a deal-breaker for me (I enjoyed Wasteland 3 recently, and have played a lot of TB RPGs), but I do have a huge soft spot for RTwP. Yeah, I have several games over 175 hours (PoE 1 and 2 and PF: KM and WoTR among them), but just a couple of 1000+ hour games (got 1,500 hours in Stellaris - a great game I strongly recommend). I couldn't quite get into the Divinity OS games, and I don't quite know why TBH. Maybe it's just the setting, and hopefully I'll be fine when its in the Forgotten Realms (big fan of the FR setting). I've held off playing it at all because I may only end up playing it once, and if that's the case, I want my playthrough to be as complete as possible. I suspect I'll bounce back to Deadfire after BG 3. TB is fine. RtwP somehow feels more "realistic" - if that make sense for this type of game - but I like me some turn-based strategy as well. It's probably also nostalgia because BG1 and 2 will always have a special place in my heart. And there are actually a LOT of TB RPGs out there, but very few RtwP RPGs.

So, I just finished my first POTD-upscaled run, and have unlocked 53/55 achieves. Now I'm planning my next run to hoover up the last 2 achieves. I don't think solo is my thing, as I enjoy the playing with multiple builds and seeing how they work together, but perhaps I'll impose a 3-person party limit. Maybe I'll also take some of the god challenges. I was a bit surprised by just how dark the finale was for Xoti (I had followed the dark-path with her during her quests). When talking to the party shortly before confronting Eothas: And it gets darker from there. To Eothas she says: Yikes. I think I turned her from LG to CE. Yeah, I've played and completed PF:WoTR (and abandoned PF:KM in the final act). I didn't enjoy it as much as Deadfire TBH even though there is a lot in it to like. In theory I liked the build variety, which makes Deadfire's 121 different single and multi-class combinations look small in comparison, but whereas in Deadfire all combinations are more or less viable (though not optimal), in PF it's easy to create a non-viable build without knowing what you're doing. Nearly all my characters ended up with 17 or 18 levels in one core class, and just a few dips into other classes for some of their excellent low-level benefits, which TBH doesn't strike as interesting as having 2 major classes like in Deadfire (something that doesn't really work in PF). Fortunately I know enough about D&D 3.5 edition to not be totally baffled by PF. From a QoL perspective, I prefer Deadfire's system of having all abilities available again at the beginning of each combat (a move away from D&D's and PF's system of getting spells back only on resting that I applaud from a gameplay perspective), and I'm not a fan of casting dozens of buff spells pre-combat, preferring Deadfire's system of going into each fight unbuffed. And yeah, the balance was all over the place in PF (esp. KM). But mainly it was the unnecessary filler content that I didn't like having to do (stronghold management in PF: KM and the army battles in PF: WOTR). Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed PF: WoTR (and PF:KM to a lesser extent), but I only played it once, whereas I've now played Deadfire 3 times. There are a few CRPGs I haven't yet tried that I probably should. I haven't played T:ToN. I bought Tyranny but it doesn't grip me (I think it's the lack of classes that puts me off it). I'm hoping that Broken Roads will be good (and hopefully RTwP). I would be excited about BG3 if it was RTwP rather than turn based. I should probably try Black Geyser too. I should check it out. It looks interesting but I'm not sure it is quite my cup of tea.

Scratch that. I had the mask, it was the shield (Oracular Focus) that I missed, but I looked up how to get it and now I've completed the achieve.

I've completed FS, and got the wand, shield and robes of Weyc, but somehow I'm missing the mask. I find it hard to imagine I didn't loot the body of Fyonlecg, so I don't know what happened. Was really hoping to pick up the "One of Them" achieve this run. I'm a bit confused. I guess I need to reload and repeat the Oracle of Wael fight again?

Yeah, this is really nice. Makes Votary a very tempting tank. Even better and even more tempting! Okay, I admit, now I'm very tempted to try an Arcane Knight or Votary as my next tank (probably Arcane Knight). I just completed FS, so it won't be long now before I'm ready to start another run (though I'm thinking of finishing off all the optional SSS artefact hunts before I head to the end (to pick up the Archivist of Kazuwari achieve). I really enjoyed the DLCs, especially FS (the most enjoyable of the 3). Makes me sad that they didn't release more DLCs or a PoE 3. I am really looking forward to Avowed (if it ever releases), but would prefer another isometric CRPG in the Pillars-verse.

That's a lot of armour. I'm not very familiar with Monks - I've multi-classed a couple of backline ranged Dps-ers with Helwalker but never used an FF (or a Monk of any type in a tanking role). And whilst I've used Paladins a lot, I've never used an SG. Could you please let me know how much max armour you manage to get to with your FF/SG, and what gear you recommend for it? Same question. I've not played an Arcane Knight. How much armour do you manage to get to with this build, and what gear do you recommend for it? [I'm just planning ahead for my next run]

The funny thing is, since wiping to the first Vithrack pack that I pulled (which included a Vithrack Luminary), its gone fairly smoothly (no KOs or deaths). Now that I know how deadly the Vithrack Luminary can be, I've adapted my strategy for dealing with them (overwhelm them with summons - animated weapons and Druid's primordial oozes, and then nuke them down whilst they are dealing with those). The Frightened Child fight was a long fight, but no one got knocked out or killed. I basically gummed up the doorway with summons, and killed a bunch of the imaginary friends with ranged AoE through the doorway. Things went a bit south for a moment when a wall of many colours landed on my party and summons, but the party held. I logged off last night at the Oracle of Wael fight so that will be where I pick up this evening. Yeah, I had forgotten about this nasty, and ran into his map/room last night (without the contract). I didn't even attempt to fight them (reloaded the save from before I went in there). I really think my party would have a hard time dealing with Sissak and all the other nasties in there (at least 2 Vithrack Luminaries plus a bunch of other nasties), so that's a fight I might skip. ... well, maybe I'll give it a few goes when my party hits level 20 (my MC just hit level 20, everyone else is still level 19 but not far off 20). Wow, I can't even imagine doing the Ultimate. So that's POTD upscaled, all the god challenges, ironman, and solo!? o7 For me, playing through the entire game (beginning to end, all side content, and DLCs, except the megabosses), on POTD upscale is challenge enough. Probably next run I'll start to add some god challenges on top and pick a party that is more optimised (I made some mistakes with my multiclass options this time, but I have a better idea now about what classes would synergise well for next time). I have 3 reasons (which may be flawed!) for liking chanter tanks. Firstly, whilst I love chanters, I'm not a fan of the idea of SC chanters (I'm not saying they are bad and I've been tempted to try one as a Dragon summoner). I'm also not a fan of DPS-chanters. I prefer making my DPS characters using 2 classes that both have abilities/passives for increasing accuracy and/or weapon armour penetration (my favourites being a combination of ranger, rogue, Devoted, monk and cipher for this role). Secondly, Chanter seems to be the one class that is only effected minimally by wearing heavy armour as their chants aren't slowed down by armour and their (high-level) invocations are cast infrequently compared to the attacks/abilities of most other classes so less recovery over time, and as I tend to wear heavy armour on just my tank that seems to make sense. And finally, some of the invocations/chants work better on the front line where they are hitting most of the enemies. It may be that my reasoning is flawed, and I would be really interested to hear what you and other people suggest for good multi-class Chanter synergies. I mean, of all classes, Chanters seem to go pretty well with everything, but for me the tank seems to be a logical choice. Interesting. I've tried a few different tanks, but I usually end up with either a War Caller or Herald as my preferred tank. I've found the fighter-chanter to be decently tanky (at least with druid's HoTs running throughout most fight), and good at holding a lot of engagement, but it does do crap damage. But the rest of the party deals with doing damage. Would probably be unviable solo, but I run with a party. But I am now tempted to try a Votary or Arcane Knight. I've never played a FF (my monks tend to be helwalkers)!

I confess that I've never pickpocketed in any of my playthroughs of Deadfire. Just never occurred to me to level pickpocketing as a skill.

@Torm51I'm playing on POTD upscaled, but not ironman nor with god challenges on top. Getting party members destroyed would be pretty rough to continue from on ironman. I salute you for this o7. [By the way, is your avatar name, Torm, taken from the diety in Forgotten Realms by any chance?] Yep, I've had disintegrate cast upon party members. Usually it's fine. I have a Paladin/Druid in the party (yes, I know, it's a strange sub-optimal muitlclass combination). I've been using it as a healer/off-tank, with one or two of the druid's HoTs running throughout most fights, and the Kind Wayfarer's Flames of Devotion for healing through dual-wielding attacks, and up until now it has done a pretty decent job of keeping the party alive. Not sure if it will be enough for FS though. I like the idea of an indestructible Fighter-Paladin tank. However, my tank is a fighter-chanter, and whilst I could bench them and put in place a Crusader (either a hirling starting at one level below my MC or Pallegina), I wouldn't have a chanter in my party then, and so would have to replace someone else to get a chanter back into the party (chanters are just too good not to have at least one). Also, I would then have 2 Paladins, which I think is too many Paladins for a party. I guess I could change the tank to a Crusader, and then replace my Druid/Paladin with a Druid/Chanter. But for now I think I'm going to try to push forward with what I have. But in my next run, I might try the indestructible Crusader! Yeah. Problem is that the Vithrak with Salvos killed my chanter-tank before Thick Grew Their Tongues had a chance to rip off its 4xConcentration. I then resurected my tank with my Paladin and the fight continued. I managed to strip the concentration of the Vithrak, and was shooting it with concussive tranquilizer on my Ranger and Debilitating Strike from my rogue, but I presume they both missed and it managed to perma-destroy my ranger (didn't even see what it cast, just saw my Ranger disappear under a hail of animated weapons and whatever the Vithrak was casting), and then it killed my tank again, and it went down hill from there. I was on the backfoot TBH from the moment my tank died 5 seconds into the fight. Second time around, I had my party hide around the corner, my rogue went and sniped the Vithrak from range and then ran back to my party, whilst my chanter, druid and ranger summoned ogres, primordial oozes and ghostheart bear respectively, and I overwhelmed the Vithrak with the summons, and then when it was focused on my summons, I sniped it down from ranged [Tank got to sit that fight out]. I will respec my Paladin to include these abilities before continuing with FS!! @Shai HuludYeah, I figured I could avoid fighting the Vithracks, but after the first bad pull, I couldn't walk away. In any case, I'm pretty much trying to kill my way through everything in the current run because I'm playing more for the fights than the roleplay this time around. But if I was solo-ing it, or iron manning it, I would definitely take the stealth approach. I'm also learning a lot about the problems with my current build choices through putting them through these difficult fights. Whether my party can cope with the well-balanced enemy parties you mention I'll find out soon. I'm hoping I have enough damage and interrupts to get through their healing.

So, pulled Vithrack Luminary early on in FS, and it pretty much one-shotted my tank with missile salvo, and perma-killed one of my main backline DPS-ers. A good start! I think FS might be a bit harder than SSS. Defeated it on second attempt with a wall of summoned meat shields. They die quick but do such much damage if you let them.

Changeling's dance was a cakewalk. The mirror fight was difficult and odd. First couple of attempts I literally got my party disintegrated out of existence. I figured it was my MC mirror killing me with cipher's disintegrate, so second attempt I burned my MC mirror down quickly, but my party still got perma-killed [portrait gone, character deleted] (presumably by massive over-damage from Maerweld as none of my other characters can disintegrate). On the final attempt I managed to get everything to pretty much group together, and then AoE'd everything down. It's pretty nasty to have your party members instant-killed when they have no injuries. Just finished SSS. I was expecting the final (Parokoa) boss fight to be a cakewalk based on my memory of doing it last time (on an easier difficulty) and people saying it's an easy fight compared to everything else in SSS. Porokoa was of course red-skulls, and the little crocodiles were 1-skulls. Fight required decent AoE on the crocs, reliable non-stop interrupts and knockdowns on the boss (luckily my tank is a fighter-chanter with Knock-Down and Thick Grew Their Tongues) and constant party-wide HoTs. I initially tried to do it with Konstantin and Fassina in the party to see if that helped their romance (it didn't). Had to swap them out for the A-team. Even doing it "right", my tank still git knocked unconscious and had to be panic-resurrected by Paladin. Overall, I found SSS to be a real challenge, much harder than anything in the vanilla content or BoW, and that was just expressing my way through it (I still have some optional artifact retrieval fights to do). And I hear that FS is more difficult than SSS

Unfortunately, great Malestom (and other max tier spells) wasn't an option as I'm only level 18 at the moment (and most of my party is multi-classed). Yep, sending one character to deal with the totem at the back proved repeatedly suicidal. Actually, each time Konstantin managed to take out the totem at the back, but he died a few second later. In the end I got the job done (on my 4th or 5th try) by just moving my entire party under stealth almost right up to the totem on the righthand side of the arena, took that one out, and then fought a slow grindy battle through everything until I worked my up to the platform to kill the remaining monsters and the second totem. A long fight. Yes, I was on the slayer path, and oddly I didn't have any problem with the cats from the fangs and fur (it's a tough fight, but I did it first time, whereas I wiped at least 3 or 4 times on the nagas). Just got the final boss to kill now (the big crocodile), which I'll leave for tomorrow. Hopefully I'll ding 19 after that, and then head to FS. I've played through FS before, but it was on veteran with scaling, so it will be a lot tougher this time. I found SSS really hard (and of course there are a lot of optional bits to SSS that I haven't yet done and which I might try to get done before I push through to Ukazo.

Yeah I think this is going to be a lot of trial and error and swapping in and out party members. SSS feels a LOT harder than BoW. I've pushed through to Cult of the Naga Shaman but failed a few times on it now. I can take out the two totems pretty quickly, using the main party on the right hand side of the arena to take out the totem over there instantly, and Konstantin leaping onto the platform to take out that one, but still having a hard time with what's left on the battlefield. I think the biggest problem is that there archers/skirmishers can burn down my squishier characters really quickly when they focus fire on one target. [Finally did it. Trying to rush the totem at the back was a mistake and when I abandoned doing that it was really easy]

I changed the party, applied a bit of cheese, and it turned into an easy fight. Phew.

Hi folks. I breezed through BoW on POTD upscaled but I'm hitting brick walls in SSS. I did the first two fights okay (hard but okay), but I'm getting annhilated in the fight against Maerweld, the mirrors to my party and the greater flame blights. Like, my party members are literally getting disintegrated and blasted out of existence so they can't even be rezzed if survive the fight. How do you deal with this fight? (Memories of a Mad Man)

Okay, I just realised that I can wait for 26 hours next to a vendor (Dimesa in this case), then check them again and their stock of enchanting mats is refreshed. Total RNG. Think the vendor had 1 pyrite about 33% of the time, and occasionally 2 pyrite. Well stocked up on enchanting mats now.

Hi folks. In my current POTD run I'm level 18, working my way through the DLCs, but I've experiencing a real shortage of pyrite. I don't remember having this severe a shortage previously and its making it difficult to upgrade some of my key items to Superb. I've gone back to the vendors at Dunnage, Fort Deadlight and around Neketaka, but none of them have any. Not sure if I already bought all their pyrite (I think its down to RNG whether they have any). Is there a good way to find pyrite other than hoping vendors have it in stock? I've been rushing through this run a bit and haven't been doing ship battles/bounties much, and I'm wondering if that was a decent source of pyrite and why I'm so low on it this time. Any suggestions. Ideally want 6 pyrite to upgrade 2 of my 2-handers and 2x 1-handers, and could easily eat even more than that! Best, Vas.

Yeah, I had a little play test with Konstanten this morning, and playing him as a ranged doesn't feel good. I think if I'm going to use him it will be as a Barbarian-Chanter as a substitute for my main tank. And Fassina I think I'm going to try as a sorcerer. Neither are my ideal class combinations, but hopefully good enough.

Follow up question - does barbaric blow work with ranged weapons? I just re-read it, and it does say "Range: Weapon". My interpretation of the description is that the +50% AoE only applies to carnage (and thus not to range), but the other modifiers (+20% damage, 30% hits to crits, +50% crit damage) presumably do apply to range? I've not tried it for ranged, just going off of description.