thelee

All dialogue is changed to "Nemnok! Nemnok! Nemnok!" All tool-tip text descriptions are also changed to "Nemnok! Nemnok! Nemnok!"

Have you gotten their turn-based mode survey? (Maybe it's just for backers) It seems to be pretty clear to me that turn-based mode is their sort of hail mary throw at understanding and adapting to the current cRPG market, and the mere existence of the turn-based beta mode seems to have reversed the game's standard downward trend on steam engagement (which is a pretty notable accomplishment for any game). If we see a PoE3 it'll probably be a combo turn-based and RtWP game. It's a big if, but PoE is original IP (read: doesn't need licensing fees and already has a proven fan base), and that is a really hard thing to come by these days. My guess is, it will receive Dragon Age treatment. Microsoft will fund it, but force them to make it more console-friendly. MSFT acquired an indie studio known for a specific approach to RPGs. Maybe MSFT of the 1990s/2000s would do that, but I feel like MSFT of the late 2010s is a bit better and is not expecting to turn Obsidian into a Ubisoft-type money-printing operation. We'll see, though. edit: more specifically the current MSFT gaming approach is less about pushing the xbox console itself, but pushing xbox as kind of an "idea" or brand across all microsoft platforms. I think maybe it means we're less likely to see a macOS or linux version of a PoE3. (which would personally make me sad since ~1/3 of my game time is on a macbook though maybe it would also make their QA easier. though maybe there'll be a business case to be made if it doesn't cost them much to add in the extra platform support vs the sales)

One thing to keep in mind is that a) characters can (rarely) lose flanked but still have a perception affliction [though this itself is likely a buggy handling of flanked] and b) even on enemies that are able to be rid of the perception affliction, you'll still have the confounding blind effect. so it's not "wasted" though it may still be a design error. though there are several effects in the game that seem redundant, and it is (to my reading) an intentional way of making an effect "sticky." For example, Wild Sprint (barbarian) gives you nimble and immunity to engagement which at first blush is weird because swift would do the exact same thing, but making them separate effects means that your dex inspiration can be countered (or ineffective) but you'll still have the immunity to engagement. Similarly, Writ of Engagement does stagger and cannot engage, which is redundant with stagger, but it means even if stagger doesn't work (might resistance or dispelling a might inspiration) the "cannot engage" component still does. i'm not sure if this is much comfort - I just remember that in any given run I find the Bridge Ablaze really challenging because even with scrolls of blessing in tow, the fact that every burned archer uses confounding blind on your party members is extremely punishing. there are also other bugs with confounding blind, i'm not sure if they've ever been addressed: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/104987-bugconfounding-blind-duration/

Wow.... since release? Obsidian seems to have dropped the ball when it comes to quality.... I mean, I love Obsidian's work, but virtually every game I can think of since they stopped being Black Isle Studios has had QA problems :-/

Spellshaping adds +1 for a smaller aoe and does -5 for a larger AoE. The "always right choice" angle is why the penalty is asymmetrically severe vs the possible bonus.

Yeah this has been an issue since forever. This is like my umpteenth run, and this is still an issue in the Cavern of Xaur Tuk Tuik: (this fire blight has been untargetable since almost as far back as I can remember - some people say it's related to saving/reloading) I mean, I guess strictly speaking it's not critical because nothing is breaking, but still a little in disbelief that over many many patches they've never fixed this. Dropbox link to output_log and save, in case developers still don't have enough evidence: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dkd9s9tw6sh9oge/AABKgoDKtP801mmXNiAr94Mca?dl=0

note that these two don't stack, being both active effects. You'll only get the higher. That being said, exalted aura is much easier to have 100% uptime on, whereas unless you have a cipher with essence interrupter and lots of accuracy or a salvation of time/brilliant loop having robust uptime for such a long fight is going to be hard.

Which subclasses would you pick for Mindstalker and Ravager (Monk+Barbarian)then? i think furyshaper makes for a great all-around barbarian subclass (even just the AL1 frenzy totem is super great for any party, and it stacks with other action speed bonuses). monk you could make a case for any (i think forbidden fist might be a bit too challenging for an un-metagamed ravager build). i think helwalker might be great if you could handle the glass cannon-y ness of having a frenzied barbarian (-deflection) taking 50% extra damage because carnage scales with PL but also with might and helwalker can get tons of might. mindstalker: you'll do well with anyone other than a psion (psion only makes sense with a caster). debonaire+beguiler is a particularly synergistic combo because the beguiler can use lots of charm effects and the debonaire gets hit->crit conversion on charmed targets (on top of having a charm themselves) so with the right metagaming you can make lots of friends, and when the charm is about to wear off hit them with a really hard cipher or rogue power (soul ignition, disintegrate, toxic strike). it's really metagaming/micromanagement heavy though.

huh wow! I always thought "threatened by" in mob stance was simply another way to say "targets you are currently engaging". way to have a completely extra complicated layer! (and this explains what I thought was an apparent redundancy in the AI scripting). edit: is it fair to say that an engaged target is one that is definitely being threatened - but a threatened target is not necessarily one that is engaged? a threatened target is someone that could be engaged, but for whatever reason may not be (not high enough engagement limit?)

There was another post about Suppress Affliction not properly clearing charmed, but they thought it was limited to just that and in turn-based mode. I think it's a more general problem then that. For whatever reason, Suppress Affliction suppresses the listed debuffs, but does not actually suppress the actual effects, at least when it comes to afflictions. See screenshot: Eder clearly has the paralyzed effect suppressed, but is still paralyzed and immobile (there is a paralyzed icon in the tooltip above him and he is immobile/unable to act). This is in RTwP, not turn-based. Dropbox link to save and output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/v46ydva9ilqtwr7/AAAtTOjPK46dYHdHrpFdI_dka?dl=0 (man, how do previously-working things keep getting broken...) edit: it was also mentioned in that charmed thread that paralyze was also broken in follow-up comments, so this is just another post to reinforce the idea that Suppress Affliction is pretty much broken right now, as well as providing save/output_log/screenshot data.

Yeah, I wasn't wild about the switch to showing adding to-graze information in the displayed hit chance since hits and crits are way more relevant than grazes. And the TB mode really messes with that now that they greatly inflated graze chance. But, UX is really important. You can't vomit numbers all over the player. If you showed like a 25/50/15 graze/hit/crit breakdown instead of 90% chance to graze you would alienate like 95% of the player base for the 5% like you or me who wants that detailed breakdown. I think they should just go back to showing "to hit" chances. You can infer to crit easily still in most cases (to hit - 50) and graze (100 - to hit). and in most cases the numbers don't get so high enough that it becomes impossible to do that inference anymore.

One thing I could think of is a trickster+mage slayer. The trickter's extra "spells" don't actually count as spells IIRC, so you shouldn't be negatively impacted by the mage slayer's penalty to buffs, and so having access to mirror image and/or repulsive visage would really help with survivability. Combined with rogue's mobility you might be able to do a decent behind-the-lines striker. i'm not the barbarian expert around here though. Personally I would try for a mindstalker (rogue+cipher) because of the great synergy between the two (cipher helps enable sneak attack, high damage attacks from rogue fuel tons of focus), and i had a blast playing rekke as a monastic unarmed training brute (fighter + barbarian) - a monk barbarian would be better. Carnage benefits a lot from using monk fists--its damage is off your base weapon damage and monk fists have the best base weapon damage and attack speed combination in the game. Make a nature godlike (so you get +1 PL from frenzy or swift strikes, which means your fists are all the better) and pick a furyshaper for stacking attack speed bonuses (though swift strikes and frenzy's action speed bonuses won't stack with each other, though the quick inspiration from swift strikes will)

interesting. my older build had an older generation cpu (i5-4430) though I upgraded the gpu to 1060 some years back. it doesn't have this persistent drop. do you have system monitoring? wondering if it's bad thermals (i seem to remember 970 could run warm, 1060 is pretty cool) that are being exacerbated by the graphical load of firing those weapons. (maybe also it happened to you before, but now you're just noticing it more and attributing it to the weapons) Deadfire is running on a really inefficient engine. On my newer build (AMD 2700x, Vega 64, 32 GB ram) I would get stuttering and frame rate drops after playing the game for a while, and after some monitoring it was because the engine was so inefficient it was causing throttling on my system due to high temps. I had to overclock+undervolt my system to fix it (and even now Deadfire pulls resources like nothing else; Assassin's Creed Odyssey with all settings maxed on HDR at 1080p only draws ~170w and temps never spike past 65-70, Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 4k draws ~200w and temps never spike past 78, whereas I could be sitting at a paused combat screen with not much action going on in Deadfire, drawing 260+w, and temps will be dancing just under the max (~82-84) before radeon software will automatically alert me about exceeding safe temps, and this is after undervolting and having to manually unlock fan curves just for Deadfire to make fans blow harder). Vega 64 is a warm/inefficient-temp gpu, so if 970 is similar that could be related.

adding to boeroer's good perspective, i found grimoire switching PoE1 a non-starter. The delay--even with quick switch--was so freaking long, that it was almost always better just to have a good all-purpose selection of 4 spells per spell level and only have a separate grimoire if you needed e.g. backup corrode damage and your main grimoire was fire (by Deadfire combat speeds, default grimoire switch delay in PoE1 was around 20 seconds!!). I found this to be a broken gameplay design of PoE1, because it meant that while the wizard was supposed to have the most spell-casting diversity, in practice they frequently had the least. that is not to say that probably they went a little too far in the other direction. As others have alluded, I like taking fassina a lot as a character, and a single-class conjurer without much effort I can get coverage for all her higher-level ability levels just with grimoire switching. An un-subclassed mage might require a little bit more metagaming, but it's definitely a huge advantage over other casters.

probably need to post more about your system? I've used both weapons extensively and haven't had any such issues, even on my older 5-6year old PC.

One thing I've learned after working in a similar industry for a long time is that "strings" of text aren't cheap, especially if they are localized. Purposefully gameplay descriptions will be vague (for example, things that say "Restore 1 of each class resource" even on classes that only have one type of resource, or "High chance of blah blah" even if that chance is 100%) because that means you can patch in gameplay changes without having to do another cycle of updating strings (which may require review) and potentially localization/re-translation effort (which can cost money if contracted out, and certainly will add time). I think that's why there was effort made to make auto-generated tooltip descriptions, but clearly (as you've seen) they aren't 100% comprehensive. A real example is the loading screen tip about empowerment. Even though they eventually managed to update it around ~2.0, it's still wrong, it just has lagged the pace of successive gameplay patches of what empowerment actually does so it is still completely inaccurate. Imagine (from an employee perspective) having to do this for every single gameplay tweak that you do (and there are lots with every patch, not to mention a good amount with hotfixes). This is not really offered as an excuse just an explanation. I just picked up Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and the tooltip descriptions there make Deadfire's look like scientific white papers by comparison. (Also - Diablo 3 lists all units in the US as "meters" even though it doesn't make any sense at all - it was because too late in the process they realized it was too much of a headache for internationalization/localization purposes to have "feet/inches" in the US and "meters" everywhere else, so they just made it "meters" all the time and you just have to imagine that everyone is a freaking giant and everything is completely out of scale.) Anyway, to the original point: I think a significant complaint about new grimoire mechanics would be mitigated if the UI were better. It would be best if you could see all the spells for all quick-slotted grimoires, and then the ones that aren't actively equipped are specially marked to indicate that trying to use that spell would induce a 2s switch time. I use grimoire switching a lot, and it can get a bit old to constantly right-click on grimoires to remind myself if this grimoire had X spell or not.

time to turn on one of Eothas, Rymrgand, or Woedica challenges then edit: yeah, separating out trap detection to perception is one of the weirder decisions that they made that I don't fully get. It's the only stat that has an "environmental" effect... Mod idea - make sleight of hand also the trap detection skill somehow and rename it something like "thuggery" or something. would actually make it really useful.

traps would be completely forgettable otherwise in a game where you regenerate to full after every encounter. this was an issue that came up with PoE1 - environmental traps did like an order of magnitude more damage to the player than traps the player themselves set. And the answer was essentially what relevance does a 20 damage trap have to a 100 endurance/400 health character if they just immediately regenerate the endurance and have such a huge health pool? 200 damage, however, that might be a knockout and a significant dent out of your total health and has real consequences. to me it just sounds like some people don't really want to have to worry about traps -- maybe at most just as a surprise but nothing that's a big deal, or just not traps altogether. sure: those are opinions, valid like any other, but my opinion of the few things that I find core to the D&D-like experience, it's traps. (edit: that is not to say that I find PoE1/Deadfire perfect. I would like more puzzle traps like in the PoE1 intro area or in that island encounter with Deadfire with the floor tiles and the slowly-filling room. They are more satisfying and sensical than out-of-nowhere-there's-a-hallway-full-of-traps traps.)

I guess that I just don't get all this wailing and complaining about so-called trash mobs. They don't bother me a bit. Every battle can't be one boss fight after another. That's be annoying and frustrating and boring as all hell, at least to me. I don't mind them that much because I like the combat and play on POTD, but to the folks playing on story mode who don't like the combat, they're just a waste of time. Ideally you want every encounter to have some kind of story attached to it. I guess that I don't have much sympathy here. To me, these games are all about the combat, and the story exists only as the backdrop, entertaining as it can be. I play the game for the fights. The story is, to me, just a way to give some context to the fights. sure - i'm in this camp. i skim the dialogue enough just to know which option to press to get me through quickly. but it can still be awfully tedious or boring to fight the same or similar encounter over and over and over on a single map. BoW comes closest to offending my sensibilities here: there are just so many soul collectors or mini-beasts of winter, and they are not interesting fights on top of being bullet sponges. if they had more of those mobs it would become just a slog to get through the DLC.

Anything blood mage, really. So much better than just a normal wizard (who is already good). Multiclass with wael, lifegiver, or paladin for some self-sustain. (Also makes it a safer class on triple crown)

I guess that I just don't get all this wailing and complaining about so-called trash mobs. They don't bother me a bit. Every battle can't be one boss fight after another. That's be annoying and frustrating and boring as all hell, at least to me. i think it's less about any trash mob fights, it's just when it's excessive and it's basically filler to extend play time. PoE1 originally had a lot of these--on PotD it sometimes felt you couldn't walk a foot without triggering another beetle fight or something. When they toned it down you still had a bunch of fights, but now it felt a little less tedious. I think Deadfire is pretty good on the balance, though I think some dungeons could be a wee bit denser with enemies (I actually wouldn't count Forgotten Sanctum in this, I thought there was a good density of fights).

It's there, I don't know why it's not listed because those tool-tips are autogenerated. I think it's because it's a conditional effect that only triggers on a successful paralyze. From https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/paladin "Garrote (AL0, The Steel Garrote only): costs 2 Zeal to target an enemy and Paralyze them for base 6s. If and only if you successfully Paralyze them (if it gets resisted or it misses it doesn't count) then the enemy also takes 4 base raw damage per second and at the end of the Paralyze they are proned. No other paladin order gets such a great debuff and even with the 2 Zeal cost a Woedican paladin can keep spamming this on a critical enemy to keep them out of the fight. The main drawback is that this ability comes at the expense of a free AL1 ability, so if you are a more defensively or supportively minded paladin you are much better off with a different order." (emphasis added) I verified this in-game, which is how I got the numbers.

just makes the chants extra weird though because IIRC non-damaging aoe spells with crits under energized will interrupt, no?

good point - line of sight pretty much has to be mutual if b could see a. consider the speculation murdered.

I would have just settled for a combat tool tip that I could lock in place and scroll as needed.