Aotrs Commander

I have never, ever, ever been known for my brevity.

I always like to write a little coda when I finish a game (especially if its one I kickstarted), helps order my thoughts. So, I finally finished my first proper playthrough. After the twenty-hours I spent on release (I was one of the backers) which I aborted until they'd fix the bugs, I ended up waiting until the final 5.0 patch before starting again. (I am EXTREMELY patient!) 183 hours logged, of which 163 were this playthrough. This makes Deadfire the second-longest RPG I have timed logged for (after Witcher 3's 215 hours). I played RTwP and on normal, because I am a terrible scrub! Now, illustratively, I started played this right after finishing off Divinity Original Sin 2 for the first time. A couple of comparisions spring to mind. By the end of both games, I had about had enough, and in both cases, found myself getting to but not qutie forcing myself to play to finish (so as not to have it unfinished nagging at me!) On the one hand long play = good value for money (since I rarely play games more than once or twice, and often years apart; Planescape Torment is remarkable in being one I have played about three-and-a-half times (and likely another one, since I DID buy the enhance edition!) On the other, it maybe slightly too much for my notorious gaming ADD in my old age. The other was that, while I always though I preferred RTwP because of those older games... I noticed fairly quickly that I was basically really only controlling two, or at most three, of the characters. For most of the game, my party was my single class Cipher Ascendant, Eder, Xoti, Aloth and Maia. I basically only controlled me, with a bit of Aloth and Xoti to use their spells and left the others almost entirely to their own devices. (It was not until this very last stretchm even, I started editing and futzng around with the party AI!) So, not unlike the old Black Isle games, in practice. Despite effectively having a party of of "casters" in the AD&D sense, I still only controlled half of them. I even play, on table-top, a hybrid of 3.5/PF for preference, wherein the non-casters do have a lot more to do. Yet that still happened. An interesting and illustrative lesson, for myself. I am left going "hmm, maybe turn-based has more draw than I thought." (Especially coming off D:OS 1/2, which I played back-to-back, which are arguably the best TBS RPGs i've played - I felt they got that mostly right.) I have Pathfinder: Kingmkaer to play, so it'll be interesting to see what I think on playing that. So I might, when I revisit (probably for an "Evil" playthrough, I have a tendancy to do "Good" first and then "Evil" once I can abuse the system better and it's not fresh and new), I might well try turn-based. That said, Ascendany Cipher was inordinate fun (and the cipher was so much fun the first game, I had me and GM!) and it's not quite a broken in TBS, so there is that! Especially since I was educated on Brilliant/Salvation of Time. (Mind you, that just meant that fight deteriorated to "get focus, Brilliant Xoti, Barring Death's Door everyone spam SoT." I actually found Vatnir useful as another sink (though in hindsight, he might have been better as a celebrant, than pure priest.) My cipher, like in the first game, horrendously out-damaged and out-killed everyone by miles, because I insisted on spamming Mind Blades, Amplified Wave and Disintegrate. I think I used all the powers I had at least once, though I only used Ringleader a couple of times in SSS, I think. (I loves me offence!) I virtually never used empower and once I picked up the Red Hand, I found I was incentivised NOT to rest, so I more or less never used any per-rest powers at all. (And, as usual, ended up with an inventory full of potions saved "just-in-case" that I NEVER use.) Heck, I never used any, I don't think, of the figurines. Ship combat was... Yeah. I tried, I really did, but when it became apparent that whatever I did, I couldn't change the orientation of the enemy ship to mine, I gave upo with it, which is na shame. I think if they had just done that, it would have been great. It wouldn't even have required all that much extra interface thsn they arleady had, just allowing you to move quadrants with the turning and sailign straight. When I realised that there was literally no point in trying any clever tactics like shooting the sails out and sailing to rake them with grapeshot from an angle the couldn't retaliate, I was very disheartened. You just can't do that sort of thing without SOME form of spacial component. They tried to cheat a bit with it and not do that; but like me when I try to not have to draw maps when I'm quest-writing because I have to crack open my CAD package, at some point you just have to; they didn't and all that work just went nowhere, which is a shame. I'm entirely neutral on the pirate setting-aspect; pirates don't especially do anything for me, but neither was it anything I actively dislike; it was what it was. So, like I said, I found the last stretch a bit... Not exactly boring, but less inspiring, once I'd hit max level. (I actually stopped and played Stardew Valley - which I bought half-expecting to play for an hour or two or at best as a time-killer - for more hours than I'd played PoE2 (ao about 140-odd), which is sort of despressing befoe I went back to it.) I paused, basically, having done everything but Beast of Winter and SSS. I ended up working through the last of those and trying to get everyone to max level. I did get everyone (including the two adventurers I made) to level 20 except Mirke, who for some reason was well behind everyone else, though I suspect that by the time she'd been alloted the XP from the end-game, she'd have made it too. So everyone even got a bit of time in the sun, in the end. I think it was a great idea to have the "recommended companion" and especially that the sidekicks got their time in the expansions. I only did one mega-boss, Belranga, in the end. I had one go hopelessly unprepared at Duragon, before going to look at strategies and such, but never bothered even going to look at the other two. (Normally, I'm such a damned completionist!) I probably could deal with the others in a simialr fashion. But, as I say, I was beginning to lose a bit of steam and I felt it would be basically a lot of long-drawn out "more of the same" for not that much gain. I was starting to find I was delaying playing to do basically nothing, because I am sufficiently neurotic to not want to just call it without finishing, but wouldn't let myself play anything else (again!) until I did finish, so I decided tonight that as all I had left was the mega-bosses and the end game, I'd just do it. (SoT is so good, I would seriously consider carting Vatnir to all the megabosses along with Xoti, just to keep the redunacy!) On that front, the ending choice was... Yeah. My Watcher had trying to be all LG the whole way through, and I would probably have sided with the Huana. Except that a) meant blowing up people and b) much more importanly, meant I lost Maia from the party. I had written off the Valians and the pirates as a matter of course. Of course, the Rauatai cause you to lose two party members (admittedly, Pallegina was no great loss, since despite my efforts, she remained the only one only at affection level 1). And to kill the Queen, who I also liked. So, in my "ah frack it, let's just do it" I went with "go to Rautai, refure to assassinate" wondering if that would get me around Maia leaving or something, but it locked off the palace anyway. So I went off by myself, my Watcher at this point thoroughly sick of shouting over everyone else. (I'll be honest, Eothas being shockingly reasonable at Magran's Teeth (which I did as late as I could, so only with SSS left to do) and with current political events in my home country the UK of late, I was kind of agreeing with him on some points, and Woedica on others, though my Watcher wouldn't...) So, yeah, I got a fairly ropey ending[1], but my (as opposed to my Watcher) was a bit more "frack 'em!" at this point. (Especially as I realised I was actually kind of trying to delay making the decision by not playing...!) I, of course, made sure I kept a save before comitting to the faction-choice quest, so I could always go back and deal with the Mega-bosses and do the Rauatai ending (since I now have a full experience (rather than just internet scuttlebutt) on how pants-y the ending was. (I also might have been more inclined to take a shot at Eothas...!) So, yes, I am overall pleased with the game, like I was with the first one. Playing it this late meant a relatively bug-free experience (only a couple spring to mind.) I would definitely be up for a PoE3, or something else set in Eora (I really want to see the Living Lands!) - though I draw the line at action RPGs and shooters (Outer Worlds isn't doing anything for me), mostly, so I'd opt for the former (RTwP or TBS or both). ... ... ... By-the-by, OBS, I am totally cribbing the Mega-Boss music on loop for the final boss battle when I run the TT Rolemaster quest for my 40th birthday next month (I'm wrapping up a party that has been around for the better part of if not actually a quarter century) . That should really get my players bricking themselves all proper-like! (As they should, they'll be fighting a 50th level Ninja Dragon Lich...!) [1]In terms of consquence only. It terms of presentation and closure, I have absolutely no quarrels what-so-ever, there was enough wrap-up there to satisfy me!

I have reported it via email, as it said in the legacy issues to do, for what it's worth. It might be worth, if anyone has access, to add a pertinent note to the wiki, as this may not be fixed officially at this point. (If not, then at least this thread might provide an answer to anyone googling for the solution, at least!)

Aha. Not sure if I've got a save between that and the oracle fight to try for myself (I ended up doing that fight, like three or four times in a row because of the lack of save point between the end of the fight and the conversation...), but if not I'll definitely remember it for next time. I'll have a look later at a conveniant point. Worth reporting, do you think? (Definitely might be if I do have a save from the right point.) Else maybe one for the community patch, if that sort of thing can be done?

Right. Then I either am being very stupid or have some sort of problem, because it did not let me do that. I have plenty of legendary items. I choose to keep the items (which made Llengrath miffed - I felt rather guilty about that actually, the first time) and the godseeds remained quest items in my inverntory and there was no option to craft to mythic in the enchanting menu. So, let me, for the sake of arguement, walk through this (and then, if I'm not doing something stupid, I have something to take to the bug report thread.) Fortunately, being a clever sort of Lich, I have the appropriate save. (Of course, I gave up, gave the seeds to Llengrath, seeing as no-one had any answers and I carried on from this for several hours into Beast of Winter before making the mistake of buying Stardew Valley as it was on sale and thinking it would be a nice little time killer and not that it was so damned addictive and thus halting my playthrough...!) So, pre-quest completion: Godseed in quest items. Talk to Llengrath: Picking the quickest "no tou can't have it" option for expediency (when I did it proper-like, I went through all the dialogue). Upset poor Llengrath... No option to enchant... ... Still in the quest items. The only thing I can think of that I might be doing wrong is if you can somehow give her the items and take them back off her, but from what I recall, if you give them to her, she just goes "ace! Ta very much!" and quest completed. On the plus-ish side, my terribly Lawful Good-ish watcher doesn't feel guilty about upsetting her by not giving them to her. For some reason, no idea why, her reaction felt like kicking a puppy and I don't even know why! (I mean, most of the time I have no particular puppy-kicking objections, not being A Pet person...!)

Only spotted this was out today. Not played with it yet, but the icons are most DEFINITELY an obvious improvement. Nice work, folks.

So, after fighting the Oracle twice today (because there was no save between the end of the fight and the dialogue and I exited the conversation instead of killing it the first time), I discovered that Seeds of Deception quest had quietly obivated itself from my quest log (I hadn't apparently found the second part in the upper bowels) - I didn't even get a quest failed notification and it wouldn't let me pick up the third one. (Given I'd had over a week, between illness and holiday and taking the second crack at the oracle (the first was a disaster...) I had to check a prior save to confirm that yes, I DID remember starting the quest). So, that meant aving to back to the bowels and another twenty minutes stealthing round shooting the static objects before I started and oracle fight again. So, having FINALLY gotten through the oracle for the third time today (by this point, the most successful...), I got all three godseeds and I can give them the Llangrath or keep them... but I don't seem to be able to use them to enchant to mythic (as the wiki suggested) - there's just no option. Which, after going back specifically to do that so I could is... a mite frustrating, as you might imagine, at this point. Is there some trick to this, i.e. you can only craft to mythic with something that comes later on? Or can you only craft with them if you do Seeds with Tayn as the quest-giver? (If so, I guess I'll give them to Llengrath in exchange for that kind naff item...)

And it was, of course, at this point, I had to backtrack when twiddling with Fassina's AI, I learned that you can't have more than one summon at once. And so large swaths of her skill points were being completely wasted. (I'm in the middle of a near-complete re-build...!) Also means, knowing that, I ought to make sure all my chanters know at least one summon...

You know, I had just never considered that Brilliant would bring back spell slots. Oh my goodness. Now Xoti and I can keep me permenantly in Ascendant! Ahahaha! I Brilliant her, she salvations of time everyone every so often...! (I did do a retrain for her, since I did NOT have Barring Death's Door - I also took the opportunity to swap in Flurry for Lightning Blows and get Blade Turn and Uncanny Luck instead of Torment's Reach and also grabbed spell shaping (extra SoT radius!), which I don't think I'd ever really gotten any milage out of.) I also made the mistake of blundering into Belranga, having taken out my Chanter Brigade to try and earn some XP. Yeah, that went utterly terribly...! (Though, I can see, the Vaelendir/Xoti Infinity Brilliant/SoT Ascendant combo might be the way to do that fight - just keep everything occupied and then settle in to make me and Xoti keep everyone Brillianted and alive....) I am delving now into Forgotten Sanctum, ta Wormerine, which conveniantly should help train Fassina a good bit!

Oh, snap, I hadn't spotted there was a new load of sparkly things on that island (Maia's Gaze...) - I don't think I would have noticed that at all unless you said! Ta! I... What... That's... Hilarious! For what I can gather, it involves getting Brilliant and then using Salvation of Time in concert with Barring Death to become unkillable and then just... Punching him to death with Swift Flurry with elemental damage...? Ye gods, and people were talking about it taking hours to kill him and stuff! What was the teleporting at the start in aid of...?

Okay, so I have gotten a fair bit of the game done. I haven't gone to Magran's Teeth, but that, Beast of winter and Skipping Ahead are the only quests I have currently open. I ahve explored all of the mao except north of Magran's Teeth and the very bottom corner (around where Beast of Winter appears to be set. I thought, then, maybe I ought to go to the corroded wastes and maybe have a go (so I could tick off that island from the map quest). In preparation for going to Beast of Winter, I had been training up Ydwin a bit (as she's the recommended companion and was a bit far behind). I entered the battle area, and that XP was enough to push me (pure Cipher Ascendant ranged, primarily using Red Head), Eder (Swashbuckler) and Xoti (Monk/Priest) to level 20; Aloth is currently level 19 (since he and Maia have been swapped out a bit for the other party members who had recommended quests). Ydwin... Is eveidently just totally unsuited to this fight, especially at level 15, though I don't think Maia would have appreciably helped. I am playing on Normal. Dorudugan absolutely CREAMED me. The first Hellfire attack was a TPK (and a total surprise), before which I was at least just about standing. I don't think I even plinked him past "Healthy." I didn't even GET to the magnetic pull-doofer! Doesn't help my principle damage dealer and enemy killer (i.e. ME) is basically rendered useless because all of my attacks are either vrs Fort or Vrs Will, leaving only Soul Shock of any use. (Normal operation is "everyone basically just basically delays, Xoti does a bit of healing when she's not hacking things with her sickle, Aloth casts a few spells, until Vaelendir goes Ascendant and then blasts everything to death with Mindblades/Amplfied Wave/Disintegrate/Death of a 1000 Cuts.) Clearly, I need to not remotely approach it this way. Looking at a few guides, summons, summons, summons. In fact, my concern now is that none of the... four? Chanter NPCs I have may not be able to get to high level, unless I can farm XP by fighting pirates and such - clearly, though, I painfully might even have to send Eder and Xoti to the ship and dig some of them out to level up. AND they might have to be rebuilt, since I think only Fassina I spent much on summons (Tekehu is druid/chanter and I mostly concentrated on blasting, Pallegina is more paladin-with-some-healing and Konstanten (the only pure chanter) I went pure offense*.) So, the question becomes, should I do pretty much the rest of the game before trying again? (As clearly, being level 20 is not remotely enough!) Is there, like, a point in PoE where the clear "endgame/point-of-no-return" starts, which I can leave off and deal with that (or does it let you carry on afterwards or something. Is Dorudugan particularly hard and I should maybe try tackling some of the others first? (Especially since I am given to understand there is a cloak what makes some fire heal you.) (I have, incidently, saved every single piece of gold gear I've ever found, and I extremely rarely use any potions, nor have I used any of the item summons I've found. (Actually, I very rarely remember to use any per-rest abilities, especially empower at the best of times.) (I had considered attaching a save game, but apparently, it's too big...!) *And in looking up how to spell his name, I discovered that he seems to be the recommend companion for SSS, which I do not appear to have unlocked/found yet. (I have all the DLC,) So there's that, at least.

Did the verify (didn't appear to find anything), did a reboot - not had a problem since in the next twenty hours. Once I'd have just written off as something falling over, but twice in one day was just either very unlucky or something went very squiffy.

Naval combat. I hate to chime in on that. I really do. I tried with it, really I did. But when I realised that there is no way to actually move around the enemy vessel (meaning you'll be stuck facing its gun after turn one unless it very rarely tries to charge you), it meant that there were no tactics really worth bothering with. You can't, for instance, shooting their mast off and then sailing around their arse or the side without so many guns or something. (Nevermind I spent the first three-score hours misunderstanding why grapeshot never hit the enemy gunners...) Once you get to the mid-game ships, it's all down to RNG and you are better off charging. Which disappoints me greatly. It does not seem like it would have been beyond even this ship combat system to have had a very simply relative position as well as relative facing (I mean, you only need quarters!) - you could have done it just by having straight move+turn+ straight move (if you imagine each section as seperated by a diagonal).

And therein lies the issue of TBS verses RTwP. TBS, because of its very nature of being deliberate, naturally encourages better tactics BECAUSE you have the time to think about it (even though the "wP" bit exists, TBS naturally makes you consider each action more. But do TBS wrong, and that makes everything tedius drag, especially if its no an interesting fight - which is why I quickly fell out of favour with the JRPG Tactical RPG subgenre. (Stuff like FF avoids that, because you eliminate all the movement that is what tends to take all the time... But you have also then eliminated that tactical aspect.) Too much uninteresting grinding you could just rush through (like you could in, say, FF). RTwP gets around that issue, but also inherently encourages less engagement, because you have the OPTION to just go "ah, frack it, let the AI/autoattacks handle it" either on an individual character basis or for the whole party. (And because everything happens simultaneously, you kind of have to, unless you are individually managing everything with frequent auto-pauses - I found that drove me insane after the first couple of combat of pause-pause-pause-pause and you might as well have been playig TBs at that point.) Tides of Numera went TBS and they were so focussed on not having grind-y fights and every fight a boss fight they almost forgot to put any fights in, and I think that did hurt the game a bit in the long run, since it made it so short. D:OS, and 2 especially, seemed to me to get that balance RIGHT, in that the fights (to me, anyway) never felt tediously grindy like that. I think it was a combination of plentiful "spells" for everyone, plus the plenthora of movement abilities (to take away all the "and this turn, I just round around") and stuff like the surfaces, capped with the fights always seemed to be well-made - by which I mean, good old combined-arms, of the sort I personally use when I write my own quests. (Compare a lot of fights in BG or even PS:T where it was "a mob of these dudes.") I think it made me more of a convert to TBS than I've ever been previously, because - to me at least - it showed me what it could be when you got it right. So. Yeah. It's kind of a hard thing to tackle, since there's not happy medium (RTwP essentially IS the happiest medium between TBS and full-on RTS). RTwP arguably is the better simulation (for verisimilitude), but at the cost of you basically ceding a fair bit of control. When I eventually play PoE2 again*, I'll almost certainly play it on TBS, just to see what it feels like. (I might even ramp the difficulty up a bit, since I'll actually be thinking and might use stuff like Empower or items that I normally just don't; actually, I think I use them less in PoE2 than I did in PoE1 for some reason...) * Which will be a good while after this run - I have found that there is zero point me playing the same game twice in a row, the second-playthrough never gets finished, got to leave it some time to fallow! Only played PoE 1 the once, (Actually, games which I play more than once are quite honoured, in the dizzy heights of PS:T and the like. I've not even pklayed BG2 all the way through more than one-and-a-half times...)

I played DO:S 1 and 2 recently (and more or less back-to-back) both enhanced versions. Combined, they gave me a good 260 hours*, so there's that. (But maybe a bit too much of that was faffing around with gear and crafting and stuff and selling stuff...) D:OS 2 actully let me have an Undead character (and had it not been for early plot spoilers, he would have been the main), which is a massive point in it's favour. I thought that their TBS combat was pretty much about the best handled I've played personally, credit to them. One thing I've noticed, now that i've finally started on Deadfire in anger is that in the RTwP, I have a tendancy to let Eder and Maia alone more-or-less entirely, and only do some micromanagement of Xoti and Aloth for spells, and mostly just concentrate on me and my cipher. I think there is something to be said for the fact that the AD&D RTwP where there was only really spellcasters to manage meant that I wasn't REALLY managing my whole party the way I rather though I was. I also tend to brute-force more in RTwP, whereas in TBS, I tend to us more strategy. (Notable as far back as FFX vrs all the other FF...) So, swings and roundabouts. I might pay more attention to the other characters in TBS mode, but I probably would be having quite as much fun spamming Ascendant and then going Amplified Wave and Mind Blades on everything as much.... (Not tried Kingmkaer yet - backed it, so it's been sitting around, waiting for bugs and stuff. I'm patient. (I must be, I backed Starcitizen/Squadron 42...) I waited a year for PoE2 to get everything sorted (after my early abort because the character reputations were borked and I felt that was, like, half the point...!), so I can wait util they do their enhanced edition. Especially since it might be the last new one for a while again, since after the compatively rush, we seem to not have any more on the horizon. Please DO enlighten me if I'm wrong, it'd be nice to have something to look forward to aside from expansions to Paradox games and Total Warhammer...!) *At some point, I must play PS:T enhanced edition, it'll be interesting to see how many hours it actually takes to play, logged for the first time ever... Witcher 3 hold the record at 215 hours and unlike D:OS, I hadn't quite reached the point of "I've about had enough now."