grasida

Also worth mentioning, the game sometimes refers to “power pool” resources, like with the DoC breastplate, but the tool top that explains what that means isn’t always available. Power pool resources are typically non-replenishable resources that can be used on any ability. So for a monk that means mortification, but not wounds. Aside from mortification, the other power pool resources are discipline (fighters), guile (rogues), rage (barbarians), zeal (paladins) and bond (rangers).

Those give mortification, not wounds. What was your question, exactly?

You can’t have 12 wounds. The max is 10. Are you sure it isn’t 2 wounds?

You could build around firebrand. Oracle looks like a pretty decent choice for that, since firebrand can have its accuracy boosted by the ring of focused flame, meaning you can use savage attack without penalty. That’s really good for soul annihilation, since it gets a much bigger damage boost from savage attack comparable to other abilities, but also is affected more by accuracy than normal attacks. Firebrand also has sort of a lightsaber feel to it as well. It’s probably not the strongest build in the world, but it should be a more or less perfect jack of all trades, offering good support, control, healing, durability, aoe spell damage and single target melee damage at need.

On paper, ascendant is all about dealing as much weapon damage as possible in as short a time as possible, then going to town with spells. Streetfighter helps with both aspects, since you only need the blunderbuss modal to get the primary bonus of the subclass, which then gives a massive boost to both weapon damage and casting speed. Trickster clashes with ascendant since it lowers your weapon damage and any illusion spell with a significant casting or recovery time cuts into your focus generation further. For the record, I hate both street fighter and ascendant. Both are overpowered in obnoxious, really gamy ways. But I don't try to make characters that are as strong as possible, I try to make strong characters that are thematically consistent.

I tested minor avatar and the greatsword damage modal and they don’t stack. Very disappointing for priests of berath. I want to take yet another opportunity to express how much I hate that weapon modals don’t stack with other buffs. I tested hit-to-crit conversion on a battlemage with intuitive, merciless gaze, the potion of merciless gaze and the potion of perfect aim. I think they all stack. I didn’t test long enough to see a confirmed conversion from both the potion of merciless gaze and the spell merciless gaze while both were active, but they both showed up on the buffs list. For all the other buffs, I clearly noticed each separate one being mentioned as responsible for hit-to-crit conversion in the combat log while all were active. It seems all sources of conversion stack, though not multiplicatively. I tested damage reduction with claim and refusal and guardian stance and they don’t stack. That means item granted modals are considered actives and don’t stack and damage reduction doesn’t stack (unless someone knows of an exception to this). Damage received boosts like from sworn enemy stack inconsistently. Sworn enemy stacks with takedown combo and inspired beacon, but takedown combo and inspired beacon don't stack with each other. Can anyone think of -AR to a specific armor type from an active ability? I'd like to test if that stacks with general AR debuffs.

I’ve been considering an Assassin/Soul Blade. Since sneak attack, backstab and deathblows all improve both the physical and raw damage of soul annihilation, that should be some of the highest damage you can get per hit in the game. Combine it with Engoliero do Espirs for a nice AoE attack on each kill that refills your focus (and also can be boosted by sneak attack), allowing you to go invisible and backstab with soul annihilation again for another near guaranteed kill. It’s too bad you can’t get Engliero do Espirs until the very, very end of the game. Maybe something similar would work with the new DLC axe.

That’s why I said derived stat. Action speed from dex will stack with an action speed boost. Two buffs to dex won’t stack with each other, whether they’re inspirations or not, unless one is from a passive (e.g. I think the conjuror familiar can give +3 to dex that will stack with a dex inspiration)

Not all the effects of the inspirations stack, unless I’m badly mistaken. Armor from hardy, penetration from tenacious, power level from acute, etc. all don’t stack with bonuses from other sources. I don’t know about stride from fleet and other stride boosts. That’s something to test. Concentration always stacks into layers, I think. I suppose conversion just always stacks, but it’s worth testing berserker and fighter buffs with things like merciless gaze, the potion of perfect aim, etc. I think bonuses or penalties from stats gained from inspirations will always stack with direct bonuses to the derived stats. So the action speed boosts on swift strikes and deleterious alacrity stack with the dex inspirations given by the same abilities.

Deadfire is a game with a lot of extremely complicated, intricate mechanics that aren’t described clearly in game and are not intuitive for most players, even those with a good bit of experience in the game. It’s fine for games to have lots of complicated mechanics. I really like it, in fact, and it keeps the community more engaged with discussing builds and figuring things out. But, information about how things work should also be easy to find. This post is an attempt to compile one set of the game’s mechanics and present them in a readable format. I hope, if I do my job well enough, that it and other in depth posts can eventually be compiled into a stickied, master thread of in-depth game mechanics. This post is absolutely incomplete, and will have omissions and inaccuracies. I’ll try to keep the post up to date with my current knowledge of the game mechanics. Please let me know if you have any problems with readability or if anything is incorrect. Deadfire Stacking Rules: Bonuses from Equipment Stack: Active Buffs Don’t Stack: -Some damage taken debuffs stack and others don't. Sworn enemy stacks with takedown combo and inspired beacon, but the takedown combo and inspired beacon don't stack with each other. Passive Buffs Stack: Hit-To-Crit Conversion and Other Boosts Don’t Stack Additively: Some Buffs or Debuffs With Similar Effects but Different Names Stack: I apologize for the “I don’t knows”, “I thinks” and “I don’t recalls”. I’ll test them if and update the post as appropriate once I do know. I’m sure I’ve missed some important things to mention. Please remind me!

A bunch of weapon powers are like this. For example, ball lightning on Lord Darryn’s Voulge is the same (or used to be, I haven’t tested recently), and if it didn’t take weapon damage into account, it would probably suck. So I assume this is intended for some weapon powers, but it’s probably not appropriate for all of them.

Class or ability specific passives would have been far more interesting than per rest abilities. It’s really difficult to fathom why they chose that role for the trinket slot, given that per rest is not popular in the first place and is hard to design around. I’d prefer something like “metamagic”. For example, priest buffs have 1/2 radius and are an aura, but all inspirations increase stats by 7 instead of 5. Or rogue abilities all become primary attacks, but get a 50% cold damage lash.

I think druids are pretty good! Touch of rot is also a strong DoT that’s deals damage competitive with higher level spells. Lots of people mention the priest of Berath version, but it’s originally a Druid spell. And the insect plague spells are quite solid AoE dots. Most of the druid’s healing spells are first rate and they get some spells that deal a very powerful mix of utility and damage, like relentless storm and venom bloom. I think people don’t like mixing caster classes because they don’t have a strict synergy that makes specific numbers go up. Versatility is hard to measure and the way to “win” the meta game is to maximize specific, measurable numbers. But I’m just trying to represent a reason caster multiclasses aren’t popular, not give a judgement on their effectiveness. I can’t give a proper answer to that.

Monks and priests also get intellect inspirations that will clear confusion. Beaten, but the monk buff doesn’t suffer the issue of other buffs because clarity of agony is a wounds ability, so is fairly easy to keep up all fight.

When I tested Engoliero do Espirs the ghost blades proc inherited weapon damage boosts from enchantment and so on, so the damage was higher than expected. It also built focus for ciphers. That was the same behavior as lord darryn’s voulge with static charge and ball lightning. I don’t know if it still works that way, though.

I’d take a few points out of int and put them into dex too, since that will speed up phrase generation and make using the invocations less painful. Int is important for you, but I feel like dex is maybe more so. I could be wrong about that, though.

You’d definitely want to figure out a way to eliminate the confusion from berserker, or else you’d have lots of problems with a berserker/skald, not just friendly fire from white winds. Fortunately there are several ways to get resistance to intellect afflictions.

But you're focusing on weapon dps that way, right? I mean I gotta hit stuff either way, so yeah might as well. A skald is really a mix of weapon attacks and attack spells with the occasional support spell thrown in. I don’t know how it holds up in damage output compared to a strictly melee or caster dps build, though. If you’re really focused heavily on damage invocations, skald is better than troubadour, but troubadour is much, much more versatile than skald and it’s hardly clear that the chanter’s damage invocations are much better than its summons.

Only the lashes on a few weapons. Grave calling and bel beckoning do. The singing scimitar’s lash does as well. Modwyr’s used to, but I think doesn’t anymore. As for class, I asked the same question a while ago here. Most people like berserker. Between the speed and crit rate it should be hard to beat. Lion’s sprint is also bugged, so gives a large accuracy bonus for its whole duration. With consumables and party support, ranger could be better, though. Its innate crit rate will be better and can be boosted further by consumables, while the berserker’s can’t.

That’s the command I used, but I also loaded a game and went and bought them and they still didn’t work. It’s really weird. But I’m on vacation now and away from my computer for a week, so have no way to figure out what’s going on until then.

The long pain fists deal a little more damage than normal fists, but have slow recovery instead of fast, so overall it’s a damage loss compared to normal fists. But you can probably do stuff like pair it with driving flight for overall strong effects. I haven’t tested it, though. Monk fists had better do more damage than any normal one-handed weapon, but I think they exceed normal weapons by a little too much, now. Fists deal 37.5 percent more than a club, have an innate 2 accuracy, compared to a clubs 5, but also get a slight damage boost (5 or 10 percent, I forget) and innately have one higher penetration. It’s almost impossible for normal weapons with damage focused enchants to keep up, though obviously some weapons are better on specific builds. I think fists should deal about 30% more damage or lose their innate penetration, accuracy and damage bonuses.

Yeah, that saber is really nice for chanters. It lets you use empower every fight without resting, and after you empower a white winds, you can use another one right away. And it’s lash also adds to your spell damage.

I meant if the powers granted by the boots show up anywhere. I can’t click on shadow form for a description, for example, but with most items you can. And the effects granted by most items show up on the character screen, but not with these boots.

Nope, no DoTs. Do you guys get a tool tip for the abilities on the boots or see the effects on your character sheet?

1. DoT characters are definitely possible, though you'll probably do some other stuff too. -Druids bring powerful aoe DoT spells, but they lack the single target capacity of other classes. -Ciphers have very powerful single target DoTs. -Rogues have loads of DoT attacks that can all be stacked up for massive damage while also hitting very hard with a weapon. -Priests, especially priests of berath, have strong AoE dots and can cast cleansing flame, which not only does heavy fire damage over time by itself, it also doubles the damage of all your other DoTs while it's active. -My choice would be rogue/priest of berath, for toxic strike into cleansing flame. If you max int and might, those two skills together should do absolutely massive damage. You start with touch of rot, which is quite strong, then can pick up decent low level DoT strikes on the rogue, too, as you level. 2. You don't need to use an arquebus to backstab. Lots of people post good things about the whispers of the endless paths with its run through ability and backstab. For standard melee, a soul blade / assassin is probably the highest consistent backstab damage you can get. You can either backstab to build focus, then attack normally with a high focus soul annihilation against a sneak attack vulnerable target, or against really tough enemies with tons of HP, you can swing a couple times to build up to high focus, go invisible, then backstab with soul annihilation for insane damage. You'll be squishy as all hell, though. 3. I haven't really explored trying to make a cold-based caster. For whatever reason, it's possible to stack a bunch of effects to boost fire spells, but there isn't a wide variety of equipment that works for other key words. You could make a skald using grave calling and focus only on casting white winds and eld nary. Those are both high damage cold spells, and your icy saber will add even more cold damage to them.