thelee

i think the whole point is that in deadfire they are trying to avoid summoned weapons being "build-around," at least trivially. In PoE1 level 1/2 spells could be end-game-worthy spells, and that seems a little busted in terms of game design. I think in deadfire they're trying to shoot for "sometimes a good idea" for using summoned weapons instead of "always a good idea." i think there's merits to this approach. I certainly loved summoned weapons in poe1, and in deadfire it certainly is a little more of a stretch, though i will still cast spiritual weapon even mid-late game, depending (because lash damage is really good). +30% lash on an autoscale-to-legendary is kind of on-par with some of the blander legendary uniques, not bad for a PL2 spell (though obviously not POE1-style great).

They are reworked, you are just overleveled for all of them. We'll have to wait for more high-level content from DLCs at this point I think for challenging end-game stuff. No they are not. Only about 1/3rd of the game (predominately the early main quests and sayuka as well as beraths temple) are reworked. You notice this by seeing the special enemies that are always displayed red (with upscaling, not sure if its the same without). Nevermind the fact that these enemies have a massive difference in power compared to the ones that didnt get added after the rework. I also finished the game pre rework and post rework on POTD so you can be sure i know what im talking about. The mid/lategame and pretty much all sidequests have had no changes. I also finished the game pre-rework and post-rework and I'm pretty sure you're wrong, at least about the critical path and major quests. For example, one of my earlier attempt at the Ukaizo fight had no skulls and no additional engwithan witches and way less general health and danger. post-rework, at level 20 you still see skulls over the dragon, and you get additional adds (though they sometimes don't appear due to a bug, which seemed to be something that was a known issue at least when i reported it), not to mention that the dragon has basically a bajillion health. But, that being said, it was still a relatively easy fight at level 20 party because it was designed as like a level 15 or 16 encounter (the quest is level 15/16 iirc). Upscaling means the named dragon gets like +6 level so even at level 20 you'll get two skulls, but it has all the danger of a level 15 encounter. It's possible bounties didn't get any harder (i think they're just leaning on the change from +2/3 upscaling caps to +4/6 caps, which I believe means enemies gain +2 levels per your +1 level and i don't particularly remember any new factors to those fights). But to say that nothing in the mid/lategame and "pretty much all sidequests" have had no changes seems like a stretch. EDIT: btw, i don't think special enemies "are always displayed red" in the rework (i know this because i attempted the lady epero estate quest at different levels and got to see the enemies go from always red to nothing). they are just super high level at early levels and the new upscaling setup means they stay ahead of your level gain for a while (named enemies get up to +6). there are just so few quests that are tuned for levels 13-20 (the highest quest level is only 18) so there's a dearth of higher-level challenges once you get to like level 13 or so, even if you're fighting skulled enemies everywhere from upscaling, and it also means that once you hit level 18 there's literally nothing in the game that's designed to give you a challenge (assuming that a quest one level higher is a decent challenge and one at your level is "appropriate").

a summoned weapon does have to be substantially better, but that "substantial" is a pretty low amount in practice i think, and it has to be rooted in the PL that you get it. it doesn't even have to be strictly better, it can just offer something special. i.e. spiritual weapon, firebrand, concelhaut's staff, kalakoth's minor blights, and to a certain extent the snake weapon spell are all low enough PL that they only have to be slightly better, or offer something slightly special. e.g. an auto-scaling to legendary weapon with a lash (+30% for spiritual weapon, +25% for firebrand) is a decent effect for a PL2 spell. In PoE1, level 1/2 spells were basically end-game weapons even though they didn't scale. higher level weapons need to do more, and in practice i think they do. I haven't played with the wizard's stuff post 1.2-nerf, but the terrifying war bow, llengrath's warding staff, citzal's spirit lance are all great situational alternatives (the black bow was so stupid good against anything that didn't have resolve resistance, so the nerf/fix is needed i think). the only reason why i wouldn't put citzal's enchanted armory up there is because i don't actually want to wear breastplate on my wizard, even if it is scaled to legendary by endgame. (also it occasionally destroys my entire inventory, so that's a bummer) my main beef with summoned weapons (and summons) is that they really need something other than duration to scale with power level. it could be minor, but right now power level and empowerment and conjurer subclass are essentially pointless exercises, which is not really what you want to do with an entire class of spells/abilities, not to mention an entire subclass. EDIT: that being said, Obsidian buffed summoned weapons in poe1 because even though they were good, they weren't good enough that players felt like they were worth using. so maybe if enough of these types of threads pop up they'll buff them anyway, even if mathematically they appear to be generally good enough to me. i'm not sure how i feel about that, actually.

It gets capped at 1.00) Armor penalty reduction effects can only reduce the penalty up to 0. Sorry for an off-top, but as you mentioned armor... if I lack armor penetration and get -25% dmg, is it addtitive with damage bonuses such as an active ability bonus, for example +25% damage + -25% damage = basic damage or 1,25*0,75=0,93? it's additive, but you have to convert the -25% into the internal representation that deadfire uses, which is 1-1/(1+penalty). In the case of a -25% graze, it functions as a -25% damage modifier when it's by itself but when combined with other modifiers is weighted as a -.33 modifier before everything gets converted back. This means a -25% graze actually can cancel out up to +33% worth of damage bonuses (which are strictly additive). So damage maluses are worth more than bonuses. However, it's not all bad because the way things are combined iirc damage maluses are additive according to their internal representation, so two separate -25% maluses turn into -40% malus (instead of becoming a -50% malus if additively combined or -44% malus if multiplicatively combined). this means -75% underpenetration is really severe, because it can cancel out 1-1/(1-.75) => +300% worth of damage bonuses. it's weird, it's not really intuitive, and it's hard to do in your head. though it sort of "makes sense" if you see a -25% damage malus not as "do 25% less damage" but "require the player to do 1-1/(1-.25) more effort to achieve the same thing" which "makes sense" if you treat maluses as rate adjustments to a player's damage output. doing it this way is abstract, but it does let Obsidian provide a lot of damage maluses without ever worrying about the player doing 0 or less damage.

It gets capped at 1.00) Armor penalty reduction effects can only reduce the penalty up to 0. Sorry for an off-top, but as you mentioned armor... if I lack armor penetration and get -25% dmg, is it addtitive with damage bonuses such as an active ability bonus, for example +25% damage + -25% damage = basic damage or 1,25*0,75=0,93? it's additive, but you have to convert the -25% into the internal representation that deadfire uses, which is 1-1/(1+penalty). In the case of a -25% graze, it functions as a -25% damage modifier when it's by itself but when combined with other modifiers is weighted as a -.33 modifier before everything gets converted back. This means a -25% graze actually can cancel out up to +33% worth of damage bonuses (which are strictly additive). So damage maluses are worth more than bonuses. However, it's not all bad because the way things are combined iirc damage maluses are additive according to their internal representation, so two separate -25% maluses turn into -40% malus (instead of becoming a -50% malus if additively combined or -44% malus if multiplicatively combined). this means -75% underpenetration is really severe, because it can cancel out 1-1/(1-.75) => +300% worth of damage bonuses. it's weird, it's not really intuitive, and it's hard to do in your head.

I think this is a reasonable perspective, but Obsidian (JE Sawyer specifically) has made it clear that they want to err on the side of overshooting and then ramping power levels back up. I think this is also a reasonable perspective, because you might overestimate how effective a nerf was and you'll spend the next few patch cycles ramping the ability further down and pissing players off each time. So from a want-to-balance-the-game-but-minimize-players-getting-pissed-off perspective, getting players mad once and then making them slightly happy as you adjust back up is probably better than getting players mad repeatedly as you keep ramping down to find the sweet spot. I think even at 50% I would always pick Rooting Pain. At less then that, it becomes more of a decision, and to me that feels "right" where a skill or passive isn't an automatic pick but something that is actually worth weighing against other skills. But I don't play monks that much, so I totally concede that the right number could be anywhere under 100%; I just know that 100% was broken. I'm actually happy that power levels for some abilities and classes are climbing up in this patch because hopefully it demonstrates to players that Obsidian doesn't just want to nerfhammer/bash everyone's favorite stuff but is legitimately interested in leveling the broad playing field (thinking of how wizard subclasses, trickster, etc. got buffs).

The fact that all hazard effects appear to be underperforming seems to me a major bug. If it was just one ability here and there that's one thing, but seemingly all of them is a big deal. I'll see if anything happens while 1.2 is in beta. If it's still like this I'm going to keep filing bug reports.

It works, but it is bracketed. Going by memory, it’s +4/-4 for “generic” enemies and +6/-6 for “named” enemies. It works, but level scaling can only do so much. Even going up +6 for a named xaurip still leaves you with a xaurip with lame abilities (this is my go-to example). The xaurip isn't learning powerful new spells or martial abilities or anything. It just stays a little harder to hit and has a little bit more health and its lame spear abilities will still be able to hit you reasonably. So even with level scaling enabled, going in at level 16 for a level 12 encounter is still going to be a roflstomp fest. More encounters tuned for levels 13-20 is needed. (If you go look at quest levels, it is clear that the vast majority of stuff is tuned for like levels 1-12).

This is also true for summons. It's definitely a little weird, but somewhat comprehendible when you think that conjured weapons (and summons) are essentially trying to scale with your progress in the game versus your personal power. I.E. if conjured weapons scaled with your power level, there'd be no reason for multi-class characters to use them because you'll be stuck at superb or exceptional when you're finding/enchanting legendary/superb. That being said, both conjured weapons and summons feel like they need something to scale with power level, maybe some sort of additional bonus (like how a priest spiritual weapon has a scaling factor based on your reputation with your diety's reputations). Because +5% duration per power level just ain't good enough for summons/conjured weapons and makes the conjurer subclass's bonus particularly lame compared to other subclass options.

Yup, I hate consumables for this reason. I do end up using some, but only in the very hardest fights, and only if I'm confident I can craft more. Now I'll probably never use figurines; items with limited charges, without any way to get the charges back, are incompatible with my brain. I agree. Especially since changing from a guaranteed 100% chance to 25% is a much more impactful change than just changing the magnitude of a flat number. You're taking a reliable ability you can plan around and replacing it with an extremely unreliable one. That sucks, a whole lot. I really dislike when abilities are too random, and this is an example of that, how many enemies do you realistically expect one character to kill in a fight? Even if they kill 4, there's still a roughly 30% chance that it will never proc. Even if you kill 6, there's a roughly 18% chance it will never proc. Even if you kill 10, there's a roughly 6% chance it will never proc. I really hate stuff like that, making a cool ability you can plan around into something that just happens randomly and has a good chance of never happening when you need it. Please don't do this kind of thing. I understand and am sympathetic to the general sentiment of not liking random chance abilities, but there's also a design difference. 100% magnitude at 25% chance means you have a 25% chance of doing something meaningful. 25% magnitude at 100% chance means you always do something mediocre. While on a long enough timeline the odds average out, and in general variance favors the enemy, a 25% chance of something meaningful means that every so often the stars can align in a way that greatly benefits the player, whereas that is actually impossible for a 100% chance of something at 25% magnitude. Imagine if e.g. Marux Amanth was like 100% chance of doing 1-2 aoe damage, versus 10% chance of 10-20. While in the long run they average out to be the same, there would be many people who would think the latter is more exciting and makes for more exciting events during combat (it would also mean that there would be occasional rare events where it would proc very rapidly in sequence which can be extremely powerful, arguably much more powerful than the power loss of long stretches of it not proccing at all). From a character design standpoint, just average out the odds. I think you're focusing too much on the downside and not enough on the upside. I mean, in the long run it all balances out to the average, but instead of solely focusing on "even if you kill 10, there's a roughly 6% chance it will never proc" also think about the times where it'll proc multiple times. EDIT: personally speaking, i think it's painfully clear that rooting pain as it was was way too good because it was basically an automatic pick ever since pillars 1.0. i don't know if 25% is a good level (time will tell), but I think a proc rate of anywhere between roughly 15-50% is justifiable to some degree.

That's an interesting finding. Still mysterious though why the damage is wrong... aren't the tooltips autogenerated from the programmed/scripted effects? The fact that both Searing Seal and Warding Seal do incorrect damage suggests some common bug. I wonder if Wall of Flame or other hazard aoe spells similarly underperform?

Hey mammasaura: are on you on the beta branch for patches? I'm curious to know if 1.2 fixed the Searing Seal and Warding Seal issues. (I only thought of this because they bumped up Warding Seal's penetration in 1.2 patch notes, and am wondering if while they were touching Warding Seal they also fixed its damage and non-interaction with Heart of the Storm.)

Wowowowow has Brilliant been nerfed at all or is a single-class cipher now a must-have for any power party?

1.2 patch beta notes this: "Magran's Faith Attuned Proc status effect now stacks up to 2 times to support dual wielding weapons with the exact same effect." I remembered that Magran isn't the only priest type that gets a dual-wield spiritual weapon, so does Skaen. So I just tested it out and sure enough on 1.1.1, the Skaen spiritual weapon is similarly bugged; the stiletto gets a lash (the main hand weapon) but the club does not (the off hand weapon). See below screenshot and circled parts: I suspect that since the beta patch notes do not mention it (and I am not on beta branch) that Skaen is still broken for 1.2, even if Magran is fixed. Attached is a dropbox link to a save right before I recruited a new priest of skaen, as well as an output_log from the combat I took the screenshot from: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mt0u6926je8a51r/AABEM4bDk-cXMEMhhFCL8G5Ga?dl=0

They are reworked, you are just overleveled for all of them. We'll have to wait for more high-level content from DLCs at this point I think for challenging end-game stuff.

I don't know if this is fixed already and just not mentioned, but this is also a problem with Skaen's Faith Attuned proc (which produces a club and stiletto) -- currently, only the stiletto (the main hand weapon) has the faith attuned piercing damage lash, and the club doesn't do anything. In case it's not known yet I'll file a bug in the main tech support forum.

well now that i'm paying attention, it looks in deadfire minor blights is on some sort of timer where the weapon gets swapped out every few seconds (whereas in pillars 1 it got swapped out with each attack). I noticed this because I would do several attacks with the same blight before getting a new one. I wonder if for some reason the timer to switch out to a blight isn't firing immediately? So I got stuck with a pistol for a while until the timer fired and replaced it with a blight.

well, hang on, after some time in combat, all of a sudden my pistol disappeared and i now have some minor blights action happening. ??? so i guess this bug is "why does it take some time for minor blights to appear?" wasn't an issue in a previous run where I had fassina use minor blights alot and it would appear asap.

As subject says. See below screenshot where I used Kalakoth's Minor Blights from a scroll and nothing happened, despite everything looking fine in combat log: I am able to consistently reproduce this. Dropbox link to save and output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8lk431crcrwngwd/AAD9cB2ZcqvvDVusdofgqbrIa?dl=0 To reproduce: run up the ramp to enter combat against the lagufeth. Select Crios (party member #4) and use the scroll. Note that it finishes casting but no minor blights appear.

Been an issue since 1.0, but wanted to report this in case it wasn't widely known. If you go to an inn and get some resting bonus, if you then go to a burial site or shipwreck or any of those map encounters where you can "search" repeatedly and time passes, after you do that, you'll find that those resting bonuses have disappeared. It's as if the game "forces" a plain rest to cause the passage of time, even though the game also has a "wait" feature. Here's a dropbox link to a save where everyone has the "Private Dance" resting bonus from The Wild Mare, right before searching a shipwreck. To reproduce, search the shipwreck and notice that the Private Dance resting bonus disappears. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3sw82tsgjxd3iki/AAAID-RKxR0calCczeUiJUbza?dl=0

You can use literally anyone on your ship. I always have people in reserve and just use them. I notice no difference between them and using actual deckhands. The only difference I've noticed is if I have a boatswain, the botswain gives me a bonus on my progress bar (again, regardless of whether I use a deckhand or not).

I was able to repro this twice. Eventually I got around the crash by first going to Periki's Outlook and then to The Gullet, instead of to The Gullet directly. Weird.

Never happened before and I have like 200 hours already. Here's a dropbox link that is to the crash dump folder the game created on the most recent attempt: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2jjdf34v2zqq3gy/AACqiYfZ-9lzpZquqb6gsWrCa?dl=0 It also contains the most recent that I use right before going to The Gullet.

yeah, i don't think there's a way other than "try to shoot again", which means telling your character to attack someone at range. what you would do in this situation is. 1. blunderbuss. 2. run into melee for a a bit 3. either escape or run away 4. immediately tell your character to attack a target 5. hopefully you are already in range to start shooting again. your character will instead start reloading. rinse and repeat. once you get the hang of it, you can eyeball the appropriate distance to trigger a ranged attack at step #4 and you can position yourself correctly at #3.

Cyclopedia explains some of the crew positions, but is a bit vague: OUT OF COMBAT captain: ??? (I think a map encounter or two checks your captain skill?) navigator: higher ranks = faster travel time cook: reduces food use surgeon: speeds up healing (kind of a moot point because most of the time I am able to return to a port to heal up instantly) boatswain: ??? helmsman: ??? (I think some map encounters check your total helmsman skill?) cannoneer: ??? (I think a couple of map encounters check your total cannoneer skill?) deckhand: ??? IN COMBAT captain: whether or not you have advantage each round below-deck navigator: nothing cook: nothing surgeon: speeds up healing cannoneer: fires cannons, determines accuracy above-deck boatswain: slight bonus to completing special events (such as repairing your hull or putting out a fire) helmsman: ships have a minimum helmsman requirement for cannoneer accuracy; according to cyclopedia also increases your ship evasion after a turn or jibe; you need a helmsman to be able to turn or jibe in the first place. deckhand: ??? The big mystery to me is what on earth deckhands do? The cyclopedia says they make your ship faster in combat. Anecdotally, if I use grapeshot and wipe out the entire enemy above-deck crew, it does appear that the enemy ship moves slower (and sometimes they just get stuck holding position). However, my own combat speed (at least according to the ship management UI) appears not to change one bit based on my # of deckhands or their skill level. Anyone know for sure?