thelee

Just to also add I just discovered that the unique AL7 spell Maura's Grasping Tentacle in Forgotten Sanctum also fails to do level scaling.

food effects don't expire until you rest, so yes, this is a bug. the problem is that the game periodically advances time by forcing a short rest instead of a short wait. Even if the rest was extremely short, you end up losing (potentially extremely rare) food/rest buffs, in addition to any drugs and such. It used to be bad enough where searching through any of the world map burial sites or some such would act as short rests, and would be extremely horrible for people in a constrained rest system (either as a voluntary self challenge, or with Rymrgand challenge enabled) and still bad for people who might have just paid out 1k gold to get the adra bath buff and watch it disappear because they searched a burial mound and found 14 hardtack. I thought they had fixed most of these, but just last night in Forgotten Sanctum tinkering with a locked vault door advanced time by 1 hour and cleared all my food effects (had to reload and try something else). Didn't realize Mahiri is still doing a forced rest.

hotkeys: hover over an ability and press a key on your keyboard that isn't bound to anything else. Now it's bound to a hotkey. To remove, hover over a hotkey-ed ability and either press a different key (changing the key) or the same key (removing the hotkey). for queuing: after targeting an ability, select a different ability, and as you click to finalize the target, hold shift. now after you do the first ability, your character will start moving onto the next ability. as far as I can tell, there's no limit to the queue length (a common thing I do is summon animated weapons via the chanter invocation, and then queue 11 knockdowns, 11 wounding shots, 11 flames of devotion... I quickly hotkey the ability with "q" and then do Q->boss, Q->shift-click boss, Q->shift-click boss, etc. while audibly counting out 1-11. I can do this pretty quickly, and even if it's a little tedious, the reward to be pereptually interrupting a boss throughout their summon duration is worth it). Some caveats to queuing: you can queue untargeted abilities, but you have to click on the ability to do so. If you use a hotkey, it doesn't work (the game interprets shift->hotkey as you trying to do some other key sequence I think). If you queue up a physical attack (no ability, just attacking an enemy) I think because that never "completes", you'll be attacking forever, at least that's how it worked in PoE1. You can also use Queueing to move, so click-to-move, then shift-click-to-move, etc and you'll watch your character go through all the waypoints you created. Useful for getting a character to move around enemies without getting too close to get engaged.

ah right, i forgot that doing anything first requires you to handover the koiki seeds to trigger the next part of the quest. I guess the idea is that you agreed to find the koiki seeds, so the only way to resolve the quest involves finding the koiki seeds. From a narrative perspective, it is odd that there's no option after having talked to Rongi to even just deliberately fail the quest by not returning the seeds. I mean, that's the Huana society in a nutshell. Not unsurprising that people living in the Gullet are open to using the black market and working with the Principi for food since trying to disturb the order of things seems to result in a summary execution by being sent into the Old City. (Though after you go and clear it up... is it a punishment anymore? Did you break their system of capital punishment? Shower thoughts...) Huana-sociologically speaking, the ability to buy fruits is immaterial compared to the upsetting of the social order, and buying fruits is no solution when put up against the strong culture of self-reliance that the isolationist Huana want (which is kind of contradicted by this settlement's complete dependence on the Valians setting up camp trying to harvest Adra. Probably an intended hypocrisy.) But yes, upon better scratching my memories, the limitation of options (you have to pluck the fruit) seems like a quest-implementation shortcoming, and googling around it seems like there's no shortage of people who agree with you on this.

me when reading the post: what about Escape or Shadowing Beyond or Smoke Veil? ...oh You could also do this with a pure Eder fighter. Use charge to the backlines and just mule kick the mage forever (queue up successive uses with shift key) with Disciplined Barrage active for the extra accuracy of Aware. Even immunity to interrupts doesn't prevent from being knocked up into the air. I think the only important part is the fighter's tankiness, the rogue part isn't as important.

Basically any wael + martial class will be fun because of all the great defensive bonus spells wael gets. Only exception is a mage slayer shaman and possibly shifter, since there's an anti-synergy between their class downsides and self-buffing with illusion.

Why dual battle axes in general? Just for the weapon modal?Yes. It is very strong once you can skip recovery. Which a barb can do with two things: Blood Thirst and more importantly Barbaric Retaliation. If you combine the thickest armor (Patinated Plate + Thick Skinned + Blunting Belt etc.) and Bleeding Cuts you will be very slow. But Barbaric Retaliation doesn't care and dishes out those bleeding full attacks like there's no tomorrow. Will will kill stuff. Which triggers Blood Thirst... And so on. I've literally never ran a single-class barbarian before, but now because of this I will have to. I never really thought of Barbaric Retaliation much before. For me, I have a huge soft spot for Marux Amanth, partially because it soulbinds to two classes I play a lot of (rogue, priest) but more importantly because I can't get over how much I love sacrifice/worthy sacrifice. Instakill on a bullet sponge boss with no extra defense check that works even on a graze and when dual-wielded makes two attempts is great, it can be like doing upwards of thousands of damage in one go and works on anyone. Even on rogues/priests that I have different weapons to use, I always keep an upgraded Marux Amanth in a spare weapon slot just to pull it out for the instadeath. Even though other spells can replicate something this effect (Petrification, Touch of Death, Death Cloud, Detonate), the fact that a graze still instakills and you can get 2x attempts and it's really hard to be interrupted (since it's a .6s attack) and it doesn't cost you an ability point is great. Pukestabber is a fun weapon. It got more fun now that I'm trying FS and there's a lot of high-level kith for me to make puke. Animancer's Energy Blade is also great. Even in normal PEN situations, the faster attack speed means it's comparable to a vanilla legendary weapon when fully upped, and in -50% PEN or -75% PEN situation you basically have god-mode enabled.

It might be different on PotD, but I just tried this fight last night (finally getting around to doing FS) and the Oracle is indeed immune to interrupts. Unless there's a second fight with the oracle that I haven't gotten to yet, at least the first fight there's a real easy way to slaughter it: Petrification. Resistance to body afflictions just means "Petrify" turns into "Paralyze" so with Gaze of the Adragan or Petrification you can disable it and just murder it to death before it can do anything.

Holy thread necro, batman! You can just not perjure and just out Rongi as the one who stole the fruit. Why didn't you just do that? It seems exactly like what you want--he basically dies knowing he tried to save the village. I seem to remember outcomes in which no one dies, e.g. Rongi doesn't get outed, and Mumakau goes to kill Tamau but then decides that Tamau isn't worth it, or something like that. I could be wrong, I skim a lot of the time. Also it might surprise you to learn that even in real life, people are not perfectly rational beings. The whole point of the quest is that the tribe at Tikawara is so wrapped up in its social traditions and hierarchies that the huana will do something that is actively harmful to their future, if it means retaining their social order, and the only way to subvert that is to lie to protect a secret. You can blame George RR Martin or whatever, but I call it "mature writing that depicts the shades of grey in an imperfect society", that you can't always have your cake and eat it too and sometimes doing a greater good requires committing some small sins, and it's up to you to decide whether or not that calculus is worth it.

if your character leveled up, but you haven't actually leveled them up yet (there's just a plus sign on their portrait, waiting) the game uses that "not leveled up yet" level to do encounter scaling but uses your current actual character level for difficulty indicators. So you might have no skulls on anything, finish a fight/complete a quest, and then suddenly there's a skull indicator on every single quest because they all just upscaled one level, even though you haven't actually leveled up yet. I think the logic is that otherwise you could "game" the system by having a low-level character that you don't level up until you actually start the quest and then slaughter the entire quest because enemies are stuck at your lower level. FWIW this is how games like Oblivion did quest scaling.

I basically spam spacebar constantly, but there's still a pretty huge difference between rtwp and turn-based to me. I'll probably give it a try once just to see it myself. I hope this really does help boost sales/attach rate a bit, since that's the justification for working on this feature.

Probably related to similar other mentioned issues, such as Vela or other summons. Note the circled accuracy is extremely low despite the fact that it should be getting at least 18 * 3 = +54 accuracy purely from natural level scaling. As it stands, for a high level spell (AL9 for Xoti) it is utterly worthless due to such a low accuracy. Dropbox link to save and output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/koaztgzblmzgvy3/AABC1J_zIkyuJVAjha1AkcPOa?dl=0

WTF "fixing" Wall of Draining when you haven't addressed the fact that Arcane Cleanse apparently cannot be resisted and has no visible to-hit roll against any kind of defense, so we can't at all see how to block it (and Arcane Reflection doesn't work). I think that's the whole point of Arcane Cleanse. It mirrors the D&D spell Mordenkainen's Disjunction, which irrevocably dispelled and even disenchanted items with no save (and had a 1% per level chance of even disenchanting an artifact, which could attract the attention of extraplanar beings). like Arcane Cleanse it was only available at max spell level, and as such *really* had to justify being powerful over the much lower level AL3 Dispel Magic erm I mean Arcane Suppression. Personally I think it would be great if Arcane Cleanse also at least blinked out or even disenchanted items, would make it ever more useful in high level fights. That's one downside of the per-encounter system versus the classic D&D style is that it's too afraid to make permanent or persistent changes to your characters.

Or that people can not do basic tasks without asking you for help, and then paying you a tidy sum just to avoid having to walk like for one in-game hour. Or how most RPG worlds exist in a place where it is incredibly dangerous to be out and about, like everything is trying to kill you, and no level 0 townperson (nor a basic militia) stands a chance at even the most basic encounter in the wilderness; how did civilization even form?

You can time it so that you do the first area without rest then head *straight* to Port Maje (no stopping anywhere), then you can recruit Xoti, and hire any hirelings, then immediately leave town and that leaves you a couple hours to rest with Hylea Bounty or Captain Banquet before they spoil. Then hold onto that resting bonus as long as you can.Ah. Thx. Not a big deal now that I know - I can use it for the Drake fight - just never considered it.Good pt about maintaining the resting bonus. Does that mostly mean not getting injuries or using per rest abilities? Yeah, or even if you have injuries just pushing through if it's only a few. There's a whole thread about no-rest runs, might have useful pointers.

You can time it so that you do the first area without rest then head *straight* to Port Maje (no stopping anywhere), then you can recruit Xoti, and hire any hirelings, then immediately leave town and that leaves you a couple hours to rest your party with Hylea Bounty or Captain Banquet before they spoil. Then hold onto that resting bonus as long as you can.

top tier, near-100% use for all future runs - Skaen: matters more than I thought while still being subtle. Carrying torches into battle (and/or deliberately choosing to use Xoti's Lantern or the special sabre-torch) is definitely something that I've never done before and I enjoy doing. I like the occasional tension of switching away from a torch-based weapon set to do more damage at the expense of losing visibility on distant archers or mages. I also like the tension that some items care about being at night, but doing so also disadvantages you a bit (either with reduced visibility or having to carry suboptimal torches). Torches are club proficiency, and I have definitely wacked bosses with a torch for the -25 will in a pinch. - Ondra: makes the storms more of a real concern, some of them are just friggin massive and won't go away. Ship combat is more brutal until you get a really fast ship, can't just outsail or run away as easily (note: ships aren't just faster on the map, they are faster in the ship encounter as well, which can be pretty brutal if you're unprepared for a fight because it might mean you can't run away or control your distance very well). - Rymygrand: of the different challenges that makes resting more impactful, I like this the most. Once you assemble a good collection of rest bonuses you really don't want to rest if you don't have to, because you might not have the right ingredients to recreate it (or you might be stuck with hardtack). Makes faster ship sailing and more efficient exploration meaningful. Acts as a money sink in a less annoying way than Abydon's. Makes you pay more attention to what stores sell what kind of ingredients (Harbinger's Watch is my A++ location despite being so far out of the way, because of the Lager that gives -15% recovery time for my pukestabber and the ease to make Brew-Battered Ysae). ok tier, fun as a diversion - Berath: basically is a "no knockout" challenge until you get some revive effects. They increased the duration to 10s, so I don't have complaints about it anymore. Can be a bit weird sometimes because "no runnign from encounters" sometimes means including enemies you didn't think were part of the "encounter" - Galawain: I would put this as top-tier due to how it makes fighting beasts much more interesting and challenging, but it's also high-risk. Dragons are beasts, the big cave grub is a beast, as are some megabosses, and if you get really unlucky you could get a nasty bonus on them. I think the worst would either be Bullish (they interrupt and push on any hit) or Unstoppable (can't be afflicted or interrupted) - a nasty buff can significantly make bosses harder, might even make certain megabosses impossible (I haven't tried any megabosses with this on yet). - Hylea: was suprisingly fun, but there's a bug right now where Vela is super squishy now which basically requires you to have 100% withdraw uptime or get one shot, so I would stay away until that gets fixed. buh tier, doing it just for the checkmark - Wael: meh - Eothas: the time constraint is fun for Acts I and II, but with Act III you either way have too much time (because you frontloaded it into Act II) or not enough time (if you planned on doing any of the extra content). I wish they had come up with a way to have a time constraint that didn't basically lock down your ability to explore. - Woedica: I actually prefer the per-encounter system. It also doesn't help that the game is not really balanced for per-encounter, so certain classes/setups become extremely good on this challenge (e.g. cipher, chanter, blood mage). Combining this with Rymrgand would be insane since most prepared foods decay in 1-3 days. - Abydon: I liked it at first, but repairing becomes extremely tedious. I would happily accept less frequent repairs with a proportionally increased cost. Having to be deliberate about what weapons you use is one thing (and makes summoned weapons and fists better), but having to repair/switch weapon or armor after every battle once you get to mid-late game is just super annoying. garbage tier - Magran: not as bad now that you can slow time, but still, wtf

Elaborate? Is it the flat +10s effect of Forbidden Fist?

This. This really annoys me soooo much. It's a weird-ass relic of BG/BG2, where if you tried to rest in town you were ordered to go to an inn instead. Meanwhile, in Deadfire, in town you can wait around for literally days, but you're not allowed to rest for some hours? Why the heck not? Sometimes I want to get my food-based resting bonuses without having to get to the world map.

unless they changed something, nope. you can't even really use the AI settings to differentiate between different penetration situations, I think it just conditions on "light armor vs medium armor vs heavy armor" which is not really useful

Have you considered actually switching out your weapons mid-fight to adapt to PEN/AR situations? Adding in effects that boost PEN or decrease enemy AR? (if all you use are pistols, you are definitely going to run into PEN problems, not to mention all the enemies with piercing immunity) the dragon (I assume you're talking about) can cast Llengrath's Safeguard, which will significantly boost its defenses and AR. It also can regenerate health via Concelhaut's Siphon. Solution: use things like Street Sweeper/Tranquilizing Shot/Arcane Dampener to strip it of its buff durations and use effects that can interrupt it before it can do things like its mega-powered concelhaut's siphon. Be smart and don't melee attack it while it has Cloak of Death active. (it is not that hard to build a PotD party that can basically perma-interrupt the dragon to death, even with stock Obsidian NPCs) Playing on PotD especially requires engaging with some of the deeper and niche-for-lower-difficulties aspects of the games mechanics to play successfully, specifically concentration/interrupts, PEN/AR, and buff/debuff suppression/countering/stripping. edit - Yeah I just noticed OP's party is level 11. You're going to have a bad time with that dragon (and that DLC) on PotD at level 11 without significant metagaming or prior experience, which it sounds like you don't have. Come back several levels higher. Even if you got past the dragon at level 11, I'm pretty sure the Bridge Ablaze section will rip you to shreds I think the target level for BoW is actually level 12 (not 14), but on PotD the difficulty is amped up enough that I wouldn't recommend starting it at level 12 unless you are very min-maxed and metagamed up for the adventure -- i'm not sure party of just stock NPCs would cut it.

That miss chance on spells sounds brutal - and frustrating. I'll keep that in mind. Just remember I was talking about actual hit chance. The game will show you combined hit-and-graze chance, so you will likely do something more often than not (a 35% hit ends up being a 60% "do-anything" chance), but it's important to make that distinction because a good number of spells and abilities have things that only trigger on an explicit hit instead of a graze. Keep in mind that your normal attacks will also have a lowish chance to hit on PotD (by default enemies are generally balanced at similar stats as you if you're at the target encounter level and PotD will buff enemy defenses by +15, so an average 50% "normal" chance to hit becomes only a 35% chance to hit on PotD) so everything will have a harder time connecting on PotD

Yes. Otherwise it's just sloppy job and it kills the narrative. Oh brother, this is the sort of LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE hyperbole that I hate. If missing out on one bit of reactivity in one narrow situation "kills the narrative" I don't know what to tell you.

Tactician and Blood Mage are stupidly good (though you need to be smart about using the tactician to get real good mileage out of it). Forbidden Fist is stupidly bad except in one very narrow metagaming situation that someone on the forums discovered that involves self-confuse (berserker) and equipping some boots that let you hobble yourself repeatedly for very short durations. Bellower and Debonaire are probably a wee bit underpowered, the former because the +PL bonus is buggy or broken so only affects the invocation you're using and nothing else, the latter because the main plus is a charm that only affects kith, which means for most fights you have a lot of downsides and only one small upside (the 15% hit to graze defense if you're not afflicted). The other classes are pretty good and fit in alright. I think there are some random non-critical bugs here and there, something about Arcane Archer not getting the right PL scaling.

You get a piece of armor that has scaling bonuses based on how much your party members like or hate you: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Hearth_Defender%27s_Scale (wiki page might be inaccurate about specific numbers, it's only been sporadically updated for the big item nerf that happened many months ago) Given that half my party tends to be hirelings or the non-fleshed-out companions like mirke or konstanten, it's not very useful to me, but I'm sure people who invest in Eder, Serafen, etc might get mileage out of it.