[Patch 1.2.0 Updates Thread]

Charm breaks on hit is a pretty big change, I personally like it.

 

Could PoE1's mental binding be back? I hope so...

 

Doubled the cost of Galleon/Junk... not sure why they did this?

 

Arg triumph of the crusaders nerfed hard! Still a good spell though.

 

Extra pen with two-handers is good.

 

Consumable nerf needed to happen. They were OP.

 

Does anyone know what the Trickster's new spells are?

[[Guide] Grow strong before fighting anything]

Neketaka quests that can be done without combat IIRC:

 

-The quest for the shipwright in the NW corner of Queen's Berth, if you side with the principi guy

-Arkemyr's vault (need a certain amount of athletics to get from the Dark Cupboard upstairs to the balcony, then get the robe and the password from Arkemyr's bedroom)

-The quest to get the Roparu woman and her family passage to Rauitai: talk to the captain in the Hole tavern, then talk to the Goldpact guy upstairs, there are several ways to convince him to give up his berth

-The drowner's lung medicine quest: starts in Pitli's sanctuary in the Gullet, the medicine can be found in the north part of Delver's Row (need high-ish mechanics for this one, not sure of the exact number)

-The first part of "Cornett's Call" from Dereo in the Narrows: with the right skills/dialogue choices you can talk down the other thief who ambushes you in the city on your way back. Again not sure exactly what you need, but I don't think any of the requirements are that high

-Once you do the first part of Cornett's Call, you can access the Undercroft and do Mad Morena's quest to steal luminous adra crates from the mill in Queen's Berth. Easy to do even with low stealth

-With all the above I believe you can complete the "Feed the Roparu" quest you get from Enoi in the Gullet too

-With decent diplomacy you can resolve the Bardatto/Valera feud without fighting anyone

-The quest you get from the guy with the missing satchel outside the Luminous Bathhouse can be completed without fighting

 

I wouldn't be surprised if it's possible to have the Guardian of Ukaizo be the first thing you fight in the game.

[What are the power-gaming choices for creating a custom history?]

I'm just wondering if there's any new info on the Woedica +1 PL thing. I assume that pledging to Skaen and then giving the souls to Woedica gives you +1 PL at Hosongo but I wondered if anyone had tested it.

[[CLASS BUILD & MECHANICS 101] Let's learn with Umezawa! (Streetfighter/Wael)]

I like the flavor of dual wielding melee/blunderbuss, but I can't always figure out how you get the blunderbuss to reload when it's in your offhand until you actually start to shoot again. Like I'll melee until powder burns wears off, then what I'd like to do is use escape, reload the blunderbuss, shoot, then go back to melee. But I escape and stand still and the blunderbuss won't actually start reloading until I try to shoot and the enemy is in range again. I'm using a lone blunderbuss as a weapon switch right now - switching to that will start the reload even if no enemies are nearby, but that means I have to wait for the weapon switch and then switch back to have melee again. Is there any way to tell my character "reload your gun now"?

[[CLASS BUILD & MECHANICS 101] Let's learn with Umezawa! (Streetfighter/Wael)]

I made a custom NPC with a similar build, and thought I'd mentioned something that very much helps me: Triumph of the Crusaders. Basically with the buff active, you get healed to full every time you down an enemy, and with this build you chunk things so fast that it's a big help to survivability. Also you don't have to be in the AoE to get the heal like the text kind of makes it seem. Assuming the buff hasn't run out, you'll get the heal no matter where you are. It's a long one too, 60 secs base.

[[CLASS BUILD & MECHANICS 101] Let's learn with Umezawa! (Streetfighter/Wael)]

Damn I'm a mix/maxing nerd and even I learned a lot from this post, thanks for this

 

Edit: reading through again, you recommend to max resolve due to "increasing returns" - can you explain what you mean by that? I've been dumping resolve in favor of dex/per/int.

 

Another edit: after googling it looks like cutthroat cosmo is only available on steam installs. Is there a way to get it if you installed on GOG?

[Things you want PoE 2 to specifically avoid if possible]

I thought of a couple more things:

 

1 - In PoE1 finishing the main quest stopped the playthrough - that is, once you went down to Sun-in-Shadow there was no coming back out and continuing on. I've always preferred games where you can continue playing after completing the main quest. Now if Obsidian has some really cool story idea that requires that the main quest stop the playthrough (ie, it makes some major change in the game world or something) then I suppose you can have the main quest end the playthrough, but if possible I would like to be able to continue on.

 

2 - RPGs like PoE have a predictable problem where being a completionist and doing all the side content overlevels you for the critical path. Personally I think this is usually a relatively minor, manageable problem - however, it gets exacerbated when the expansions (WM1 and WM2 in this case) are designed to come before the endgame rather than after. Following the suggestion in #1 above opens up the option of putting the expansion (if there is one) after the main quest and making it high level content, which is the way I prefer.

 

(2 also heads off a potential problem: according to Josh Sawyer, PoE2 will be roughly the same length as PoE1. And yet after the stretch goals the level cap is going to be 20, whereas in vanilla PoE1 it was 12. Unless they're going to significantly speed up the pace of leveling, which I don't think I'd want, how to resolve this? One answer is to include more endgame-type content to keep us busy after the critical path is complete.)

[Casting outside of Combat]

It's difficult to know what the gameplay experience of pre-combat spells is going to be without knowing about how this "empower" system of theirs is going to work. Some of the reasons pre-buffing got tedious in Tyranny is that 1. everyone could cast spells if they had sufficient lore and 2. spells were cooldown-based. If spells in PoE2 are going to all work on a per-encounter basis that could mean that pre-buffing could get tedious, as there's no downside to doing it (whereas in PoE1 it would use up one of a limited number of spell casts).

 

It's one of the reasons I'm kind of apprehensive about this whole "empower" thing, to be honest...

[Casting outside of Combat]

I believe out-of-combat casting should be brought back. As I understand it, there are two main reasons why it was left out of PoE1:

 

1 - The devs thought that the ritual of pre-buffing could be tedious and added busywork to fights.

 

2 - They wanted buff spells (and potions, etc) to be included in the action economy - that is, when you cast a buff spell, you have to take into account not only the pros/cons of casting a buff spell instead of a heal/damage spells with your limited slots, but also the time it takes to cast it vs. another type of spell.

 

Here are my reasons why I don't care for this reasoning:

 

"Pre-buffing is tedious": First, you don't have to do it. You could play BG without pre-buffing and do just fine. The same has been true of other isometric-style RPGs that allowed it. (And if you don't want tedious gameplay options to give players a mechanical advantage then you're gonna have to do a whole lot more than just restrict pre-buffing. Like remove the entire "camping supplies" system, for instance.)

 

Second, I don't see why casting spells before combat is any more tedious than casting them during combat. When I didn't pre-buff what I often did instead was have my Priest (usually) casting a chain of buff spells during combat instead of before. If anything that meant more micromanagement in my experience.

 

Third, in PoE1 you can still pre-buff if you're willing to cheese a bit. You can have someone pull with a ranged weapon while your party waits around a corner, or use a spell/scroll of tanglefoot to slow the enemies down, or have someone with move speed kite them in a circle, or some combination of all of the above to create an interval between the formal start of "combat" and the point where the fight is actually joined. This means that in practice most of the time you still CAN pre-buff, but now it actually requires more busywork than before.

 

Fourth, I'm not sure tedious pre-buffing was actually removed from the game in the end. There's a reason that Priest is the closest thing to a required class, there are many fights whose outcomes hinge on whether you have the proper immunities up when the fighting starts. There was plenty of de-facto "pre buffing" in my playthroughs whenever I had to fight Fampyrs or Lagufaeth or Caen Gwyla or anything that used powerful status effects.

 

Not only that, but there are buffs you can cast outside of combat. Food and drugs aren't mechanically much different than buff spells, and they're available outside of combat. I can wolf down four different meals, chug an ale, and munch on some svef before a fight and walk in with a combined (if I remember right) +9 to various stats, extra move speed, extra DR, and faster attack speed without giving the action economy a second thought. What line of reasoning says that that's OK but casting blessing before a fight isn't?

 

"Our way integrates buff spells into the action economy":

 

I don't think the advantage of this, in terms of gameplay, is as big as Obsidian says. The "should I use a limited consumable/should I use one of my limited spell slots" decision is still there, so it's not as though there's no tactical angle to it. It seems to me that the "action economy" argument is on some level a tacit admission that they don't really want you casting buff spells at all, or at least not casting them as much - if so, they should either nerf them or remove them from the game entirely IMO.

 

I think a practical effect of the combat-only restriction is that many players either rarely use the game's combat-only consumables or don't use them at all. Which is a shame as I think PoE1's consumables (and the related crafting mechanics) were pretty cool and added a lot to the game.

 

My final objection has to do with immersion, for lack of a better term. The following never made sense to me as I was playing: I have a potion. I'm holding it in my hand. I'm looking at it. But I can't drink it - not until my buddy shoots an arrow at a nearby xaurip or whatever. THEN I can drink it - even if the xaurip is around the corner or on the other end of the map in someplace I can't even see. Things like that are a periodic reminder that game design supercedes and overrules common-sense notions of what I should and shouldn't be able to do in this world.

 

Even if it doesn't affect your immersion, it leads to fidgety, non-intuitive game systems. My cipher can start combat by confusing an enemy, but not by charming it. My wizard can start combat by shooting a lightning bolt at an enemy, but not by casting magic missile at it. I remember on my first playthrough I was irritated more than once at finding out that an ability that looked promising when I took it during a level-up couldn't be used outside of combat according to rules that don't have any rhyme or reason I can decipher.

 

To make one final conclusion and comment: from what the devs have said, it sounds like there's gonna be more customizable difficulty toggles in Deadfire, and there's also this "Berath's Boon" thing they're doing. Even if you don't like have pre-buffing in your base game, could you at least include it as a toggleable difficulty/new game+ option? It's a possible compromise.

[crazy ideas you like to have (but most likely not get)]

Forgot to add --- I'd like to see..err...hear more ambiance sounds. For example, while walking around the village of Gilded Vale, you don't hear any village chatter or random NPC sounds (like they had in Baldur's Gate). It's simply music and the sound of your party's footsteps. I can SEE that I'm in a village but I would like Hear that I'm in a village as well.

Having just recently played the new Torment game I second this, it had great sound design which really added to the ambiance, especially in Sagus Cliffs. So much so that the sudden absence of ambient sound (when you stepped into the grove place in the government district) was immediately noticeable and effective.

[List of PoE1 Inconsistent Stuff]

I have 300+ hours in this game and I never knew ironskin potions worked like that... I never used them because the tooltip made them sound worthless

[Things you want PoE 2 to specifically avoid if possible]

 

 

 

 

 

By the middle of the 16th century, metallurgy and armor technology had evolved to the point of being very resistant to bows. In the 15th century, this was not so much the case.

The Battle of Agincourt showed that the longbow was highly effective against armor *of the time*. In 1415.The arquebus I believe first showed up in mass war around 1460? At the time, bows would've been perfectly, and probably more, effective.

But the game is not situated in the 15th century.

Their game isn't situated in *any* historical era directly analogous to *any* Earth period. Middle 15th to early 16th is the technological range shown, that's all.

Your thread is "Things you want PoE 2 to specifically avoid if possible" I said that I wanted them to avoid being unrealistic with guns, some people tried to debunk this by saying that bows were better than guns in that time period 16th century in the real world, the period that the game is based, and using real life examples so I debunked their argument with an argument adressing the real world 16th century, that's all.

So I should have just said to them "hey it's just a fantasy" or "hey it's my opinion" instead of making a little research and proving my point? So discussing anything in the forum is pointless? Everyone can just say "hey it's fantasy"?

They're game is not "based" on the 16th century tech. It's based on tech from *various points with a hundred years time span*. There's isn't an exact "guns, armor, and bows from 1540" deal. It's just what they thought was cool. The conflict is that your looking for hard definitions when they're using broad strokes.

 

Well... you have to tell that to Obsidian, they advertized the game as based on the 16th century technology, just look at ANY site advertizing the game...

 

And... Deadfire is just a confirmation of this information, which century the colonization and conquests of the land previous owned by indiginous people began?

 

 

In the PoE universe Dyrwood and Readcearas are both former Aedyran colonies that have been independent for over a century though. Eora's history hasn't followed Earth's that closely.

[Things you want PoE 2 to specifically avoid if possible]

I agree with the first point (repositioning during cutscenes so that my squishy is in front) and would extend it to say that any cutscene that repositions my party at all should be avoided if possible. I hate fights where my party is relocated to some awful place in a pre-fight cutscene (just because I played it recently, one example from PoE1 is the boss fight in the Skaen temple where opening the door triggers a cutscene that puts you inside the room. That would be bad even if the main character wasn't in front). A similar thing is having dialogue or other interactions, forced or otherwise, pull you out of stealth.

 

I agree with the second point (godlike character being asked about siring a hollowborn child)k, but things like that are likely to slip through in a big game.

 

Someone mentioned the wonky potion-drinking process that fails half the time. I absolutely agree, drinking potions was a pain in PoE1 and you had to doublecheck several times to make sure the character actually drank it. So fix that.

 

On guns vs. bows, they should aim for having the difference between the two be intuitive and then let game design steer them from there rather than try to achieve a specific historical accuracy which we'll probably never have consensus on anyway. I think the current setup is pretty good: guns are more powerful and pierce arcane veils, but reload more slowly. 

 

Something I don't want to see again is discord in tone between the style of play encouraged by the game and the style implied by the main quest. What I mean is that in PoE1 the main questline had you beginning to possibly go insane at first, and then chasing Thaos in the end. Given those quests, puttering off and doing a bunch of side quests seems strange, like you're ignoring a pressing, time-sensitive problem to help someone with one of their errands. In PoE2, I hope they're careful not to suggest time pressure in the main quest unless they actually mean for you to focus on it to the exclusion of other things.

 

On five party members vs. six: I don't mind. Melee classes need more micromanagement in PoE than they did in BG for example, so I understand the reasoning behind bumping things down to five. I guess I would slightly prefer six but I don't think five is terrible or anything. And if you ask me the whole console vs. PC angle to the debate is a red herring.

 

On Tyranny and its combat: I liked Tyranny overall but I don't want PoE2's combat to be like Tyranny's (I would like its reactivity to be more like Tyranny's though, within reason). I don't think that's a risk though. I haven't heard any of the devs specifically cite Tyranny as something they want to emulate or anything.

 

One thing I would like to see change is pre-buffing. I have a whole list of reasons why I think they should allow pre-buffing (that is, casting buff spells, drinking potions, etc... outside of combat) that's too long for this post, but suffice to say I think the pros of allowing it outweigh the cons. Even if it's not part of the default game, it's something they could add as a difficulty toggle or possibly a Berath's Boon option.

 

EDIT: One final thing I just thought of is something that they've already mentioned they're doing and that's cutting down on the amount of trash mobs. I think that's a good idea as there were parts of PoE1 that got a little tedious with all the trash fights. I don't want a huge decrease, just like a small-medium sized one.