thelee

Yeah it got hit as part of a consumable-wide nerf in 1.2. Some of the items were frankly too good imo--my quote mentions Potion of Impediment and with a modest alchemy skill you could get >50% interrupt chance, which on a dual-wielder means you could completely lock out an enemy from doing anything relevant for the rest of the fight. Now it's locked at 30% which while not broken is still decent to use in fights.

to clarify -- the looters can be separated, and if you didn't manually separate them before, you fought them all at once. This was true pre-3.1, and can confirm with my very new run that they can still be separated into separate encounters.

Some more examples added from that thread: 4. The Drake fight at the Engwithan Dig Site. Every creature gets pulled apparently. 5. Old City where the spirits and blights are. Everything gets pulled. "But i was surprised of a specific encounter in the old city (southeast of the map), where i always pulled the group of blights together with all the spectres, shades and skeletons. It wasn't only an unbelievable difficult fight but also a nightmare from the performance perspective."

I filed a bug here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/106565-31-enemies-on-potd-are-being-pulled-too-easily/ Please add your comments if you also think it might be buggy.

Even if it is intended, it seems to render Berath's Challenge partly redundant. What does it matter if combat won't end if enemies are still nearby if every enemy and their friend is already charging into your fight.

Yes. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/99409-mechanics-power-level-compilation-thread/ "Potions/drugs: are influenced by your Alchemy skill. Like scrolls, if you have any bonus to your power level (from items, potions, or whatnot), those also boost potion/drug power level. Nalpazca monks effectively have +10 PL for drugs, which generally means +50% duration with drugs. Pre-1.2, all potions/drugs got their effect boosted by your alchemy skill, but this scaling has been removed with 1.2. (So no more broken uses of Potion of Impediment.) Might, intellect, and perception have no effect on potions." so potions/drugs get 1 PL bonus scaling (+5% damage/healing, +5% duration mostly) per point of alchemy. Arcana also provides PL scaling to scrolls at half strength, so in addition to helping you meet minimum scroll requirements, it's still worth investing in arcana to make your scrolls all the more powerful. (In fact I would argue that this scaling is slightly broken, because at 15 arcana you are effectively able to cast spells like Tornado or Great Maelstrom with much higher PL scaling than you might otherwise if you were e.g. a druid.)

On 3.1, people are finding it more likely that when you aggro one enemy, you may end up pulling several rooms worth of enemies on PotD: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/106547-any-thoughts-on-post-31-potd-balance/page-2?do=findComment&comment=2110445 At first I thought this was part of the mid-late game rebalancing mentioned in the 3.1 patch notes, but the above linked thread talks about this happening in the sea cave at Vilario's Rest, which makes me wonder if this is actually a bug? List of examples from that thread: 1. Fighting beetles in sea cave results in skeletons and other mobs from the far right being pulled in (?? intentional or not??). Used to be distinct encounters. 2. Ashen Maw Jagged Keep (the one where the altar to Magran is), aggroing the first rathun going up the main corridor results in pulling every rathun in that main central corridor in each room. (Whereas pre-3.1, even on Berath's Challenge mode, while I wouldn't leave combat after clearing one room, I had to manually run up into the next room to pull more enemies.) 3. Kapanga Palace Second Floor during "The Final Maneuver"-- every single enemy on this floor gets pulled into the fight. Would be helpful to get a confirmation yay or nay on intended behavior.

I was surprised in the cave in Vilario's Rest, when during the very first fight with two beettles I faced few skeletons, Revenant and Rotghast at the same time (those monsters were guarding that upper platform with the chest in the bottom right corner of the map prior to 3.1). You know what, this happened to me too on a new playthrough. I wonder if this pulling behavior is actually just a bug? Because it seems weird to want to make Vilario's Rest any harder.

Yeah one thing I noticed is that it seemed like enemies seemed real happy go lucky about using their mobility abilities (leap, charge, teleport) to my weaker party members. It might be a coincidence - there's just a lot more of them now so it might just be more noticeable. But certainly means you have to be more present for the fights.

Dont worry, this has been happening as long as I can remember in PotD. Intended behavior for some creatures.

Don't forget its right click menu, too!

I imagine it doesn't change. Can you keep the Watcher far from the party and come later to join the battle, leaving Vela in a safe place? Yes. In fact with this run I'm just charging into battle a lot, which means Vela stays far back away from the fight.

So um... now that this is live, I'm kind of disappointed by it. It looks like they fixed the "issue" was causing Vela to wander around in combat, so it seems that all she does is cower in place wherever she was when combat began... which basically just means I can't retreat is all. Does this change over the course of the challenge? Or is this just the way it is?

to really get mileage out of it you'd need Obsidian to fix their known-issue-since-1.0 that you can't reverse pickpocket onto red-circle NPCs (which is basically the vast majority of NPCs you actually want to reverse pick pocket onto). sigh...

I've noticed this mostly with 3.1, don't know if this has happened before 3.1. Normally not a big deal, and I suspect it's just the interrupt effect that's triggering multiple times (no large amounts of repeated damage for warding seal). It might even just be a display issue in the combat log. So ordinarily I would not have gone through the effort to create this bug. That is, until this happened: I cast this seal and it filled up my combat log with interrupts on this poor xaurip. I don't know if that xuarip was actually being interrupted that many times, but frankly I can't even verify it because I don't even see an associated attack roll from the repulsing seal attack, as I normally do. And this interrupt happened over a short span of time, because it's interspersed with some attack attempts from my characters (all within the span of a half second or so). Anyway, I'm not sure how reproducible it is, but here's a dropbox link to a save and output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kpkob7opdsg7o8a/AABdqntr7Pjbpbnd_-q5wpkMa?dl=0

Is Final Maueuver's recommended level really level 14? That doesn't make much sense, given that you are already level 20 if you do all the side-quests. I guess the devs didn't expect folks to do even half of the side-quests? Anyways, I thought the difficulty was slightly increased, and I felt it a bit in early and middle levels; but I cannot make it out what changed. Are there more mobs? Are mob stats changed? Either way, I think the game is still too easy when playing with an optimized party. For instance, the dragons went down so quickly that I didn't get to experience the new injury mechanic tied to the dragons. In fact, I think my main character literally got to swing once and nothing else against one of the dragons. Kind of silly. Yeah. There's a chart here, which pulled up the level used to determine whether or not to upscale/downscale and/or show you skulls: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/98843-level-scaling-difficulty-potdcompilation-thread/page-3. Obsidian definitely designed the critical path for a large portion of players who barely do any side quests, so low targeted levels. But with the changes it seems like they're acknowleding people who play on PotD are going to be more completionists, so it seems liek the target level has been bumped up a couple of notches. I didn't get to try the dragons (I was blitzing through critical path so I just chose the non-violent option). But at least for me in Ashen Maw, the Rathun there were more numerous (and pulled each other from other rooms), and this time around I had to be very deliberate in what order I killed them (Flamecallers, then Fanatics, and then Raiders... or else Fanatics spam healing on everyone, or else Flamecallers go crazy with nonstop delayed fireballs). Similar thing with the Kapanga Palace fights; I was fighting triple-red-skulled watershapers at level 15, and if I didn't take them down ASAP (though they go down easy once targeted) they would basically keep the entire enemy party permanently alive with 5-6 gardens of life, and nonstop HoTs. Similarly, every single enemy gets pulled in Kapanga Place second floor, and some extra archers and spearmen spawn (though they're just cannon fodder; once the watershapers go down every one else is a bit easier). Kapanga Palace rooftop had beefed up monks... I don't think I've seen enemy monks that can do Whispers of the Wind before. I could be wrong--I've only done the Rautaui quest line once before, so maybe it was always like this (I really doubt it though). Basically, it seems like extra enemies, enemies with more high-level abilities that they use more aggressively, and it's harder to separate out the enemies into separate encounters. (In fact, when I did Ashen Maw with Berath's challenge enabled, I would clear out a room, but still be in combat, and have to manually run to the next room and pull the next batch of enemies. Post-3.1 without Berath's challenge, I didn't have to do any pulling. I aggro-ed one Rathun, ran back to the entrance, and everyone came.) I think if I was level 16, with average superb gear, the fights would've been speedbumps, but not challenging. So I think it does mean that Obsidian tweaked up the end game a little, but if you're a level 20 with full BoW and SSS completion, you're still going to roflstomp most stuff end game.

Yeah, it's funny. When I first reported this bug in 1.0, I suggested that they should compromise while doing the fix and do +15s for Salvation of Time, my reasoning being that combat in Deadfire is slower than PoE1 and even in PoE1's faster combat +10s was only somewhat worth it. Since then, speaking for myself, I've learned many ways to get a lot of mileage out of +10s. So while this fix certainly nerfed it a bit, it's still one of the most interesting spells even without a buff to +15s. There are just a lot more interesting short-duration effects in Deadfire than in PoE1.

I had forgotten about the the increased difficulty for mid-late encounters. I was trying to wrap up a run that I wasn't happy with, and just decided to dart down the critical path at ~level 14. This would've been enough to roflstomp Ashen Maw pre-3.1, but I ended up getting my butt handed to me several times over before I gathered my thoughts and put some strategy to it. And then I finished up the Rautaui quest line, and storming Serpent's Crown I also ended up getting my butt handed to me, repeatedly at level 15 (Kapanga Palace second floor and rooftop battles were brutal) whereas before I would've also roflstomped them (instead I spent a couple hours just repeatedly trying the last couple fights). Wondering if anyone else has tried out some of the later game stuff (I wonder if drowned barrows/shimmering isle also got kicked up a notch) and whether you think it's a good fit? Personally, my main beef is how the level guidance for quests on PotD basically is meaningless now. I don't feel embarrassed in saying that if I had actually tried "The Final Maneuver" (final Rautaui quest) at its target level of level 14, it would've been close to impossible for me to complete. Other than that, as long as I'm a bit more mentally prepared for the new challenge (and mentally adjust the target quest levels up +2 levels), I think any lingering PotD difficulty concerns I had go out the window. I'm really curious to see what the Nemnok fight is like now (though that'll be for a future run). edit - part of the difficulty here might be that this run had abydon's challenge enabled. so everyone was in suboptimal gear (mostly exceptional, some fine, and only three that were better than exceptional). i wonder if it would've posed nearly the same kind of challenge if i wasn't deliberately holding back on equipment? (superb everyone, some legendary). still, fighting an enemy party that has a pair of monks unafraid to spam skyward kick, flagellant's path, and whispers of the wind at level 14-15 is rough anyway you slice it.

power level doesn't affect AoE; it affects projectile count (for multi-projectile stuff), damage/healing, pen, acc, and duration. It's also not +3 per power level, it's +3 per character level past level 1. it's a standard 20 base +3/acc every level after 1 that is part and parcel of most attack rolls. (reverse pickpocketing is also covered in the power level guide. as mentioned there, in addition to +100 accuracy, it also increases explosives base damage by +100%)

+1 here. Adding video And dropbox link just in case: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xet39qg4vlb70zx/AACUKikonemkN5wC_-TEFGXYa?dl=0

On the other hand, being empowerable means it can be spellshaped with no consequences. So uh... maybe this should be left alone Or, best-case scenario, Salvation of Time does something with PL scaling that is relevant. (The only thing I can think of is +10s beneficial duration effect increasing by 5% with each PL.)

Probably should be overridden to not be empowerable. If you do empower Salvation of Time, then in the combat log you see it get bonuses to all sorts of things that are utterly irrelevant: pen and accuracy mostly. But nothing that matters is actually affected. You can reproduce this with any game where you have access to this spell, but as a shortcut here's a dropbox link to a quicksave and output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a8z9lykdvx7o6ei/AAA2G8i1C7pyuPkULAYCiCqha?dl=0 (just attack the rathun and try to empower salvation of time)

yeah, 100 upboats for some sort of non-eothas-style rest spam limit. Rymrgand is kind of also a rest spam limit since good food decays so quickly, but both Eothas and Rymrgand effectively also function as anti-exploration mechanisms, which I don't like. After playing with god challenges more, I'm not a big fan of Abydon. It starts becoming extremely tedious mid-late game. Not so much the economy of having to be really sparing with exceptional and better weapons, but because combat gets to the point where you're doing enough damage or receiving enough damage that it seems like you need to repair after each encounter. I have a Abydon+Skaen run, and honestly I'm having a real hard time getting motivated to play it (I will probably just rush through the critical path) because the Abydon aspect is getting to be a real tedium. Yeah I noticed this about Abydon's even during the tough fights in the first section of the game, I would burn through weapons in one encounter so an adjustment sounds good ... wonder if it is tied to PEN in anyway, not sure how you could figure that out though as it seems complicated. frankly i think i would be happy if they just made weapons/armor breakdown half as much and just adjusted the repair cost upwards. it's just annoying to go through my inventory after almost every fight to repair or swap stuff out. i'm not so sure that obsidian is interested in god challenge rebalancing though... a lot of complaints about berath and magran's earlier in this thread and nothing has come of it.

Hey, not to put a damper on your research, but may I recommend looking at the Power Level guide first? A lot of this is covered by the power level guide already (the way the explosive skill is implemented is by increased power level, which matters for how multiple modifiers interact with each other). In addition, this +5 accuracy bonus you talk about based on power level, I can't reproduce it at all. Me, in game, just now: There is a standard +3/level accuracy bonus you get for each character level above 1 that is universally applied. Is that what you're referring to?

There's been a bug since 1.0 where the first cast of Salvation of Time in an encounter would add +20s, not +10s to beneficial durations. It appears that since 3.1, this behavior has been stealth fixed (I consistently get +10s on first cast now). That is all.