[Saru-Sichr multi-effects !]

so, every time you hit with saru-sichr and the dot stack refreshes, *each* stack triggers a melee weapon effect??

[Deadfire DLCs and sidekicks]

20 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

What about Rekke? Does he get any dialogue content in the DLCs (or the vanilla game for that matter)?

iirc reke mostly gets random barks. enough for a bit of an arc in vanilla, but not a *ton*. i think he probably gets the least content overall.

[S4 - Standalone Seeker Slayer Survivor mod! (Beta/Feedback thread)]

13 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

EDIT : Well, maybe the cursor is slightly too high compared to the base game. I got my arse kicked on second fight without having a clue about how to win it. Granted maybe my party isn't perfectly built BUT the point of the mod is to enable experimenting various party, so any semi balanced party should work more or less. I don't consider myself a very good player (I can't beat the game above PoTD with party, I don't play solo), but I usually don't have that much difficulty.

"cursor?"

this thread is now an S4 strategy/tips discussion.

i found what helped was being a lot more aggressive with anti-poison than i normally am. (antidotes and my main druid i specced out purge of toxins, which i normally avoid) on TB mode in particular, I bought and used a couple summon items to soak up hits (and action economy) and brought a long a cipher who could fast cast puppet master at the opening of the fight.

all else fails buy some scrolls of greater maelstrom to wipe out the totems asap, and a few naga as well

 

edit: i guess whether or not this is a "fair" difficulty for S4 is an interesting question. definitely would be more prepared in base game, but in s4 you have a lot more tools you can straight up buy or train on the spot.

[Deadfire DLCs and sidekicks]

yeah i wouldn't consider it a lot of content for sidekicks, but it is definitely a welcome change from the non-DLC game where they were silent

[Seraphen the Misunderstood]

30 minutes ago, masterty66 said:

People complain a lot about Wild Mind but I've used Serafen as a Cipher quite a bit and I feel like I haven't often noticed it and thought man this is screwing me over right now. I know it procs regularly and sometimes negatively but it's only rarely lost me fights. 

it used to be a lot worse in earlier patches. the shock damage one could wipe entire parties out.

the big problem is that you don't get anything out of wild mind (aside from the cheese constentin just discovered). all the wild-mage-style classes i can think of it in my experience have other benefits, and the variability is considered the drawback, not the defining feature. and the effect is a symmetry that's very hard to break to your advantage (again, aside from the cheese just discovered).

even with the shock damage nerf, as an example i think "target becomes invisible" effect can be extremely bad for a fight, especially if it triggers on an aoe. that means casters you can't interrupt, free sneak attack or other attacks from enemies, it could foul up spells/effects you have cast that are already in motion. even if it happens to you, an unexpected invisibility can be bad, since this invisibility also means untargetability. i've literally gotten a KO because the invisibility hit an ally and it made a support spell whiff (i forget if it was a heal or a suppress affliction, but it was a DoT that i missed the window to counteract)

[Heart-Chime Amulet/Strand of Favor question]

inversions are really ugly. if you're curious, you can read about them here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/inversions

i suggest two rules of thumbs.

first. "is this thing affected by inversions?" if you stacked a bunch of small modifiers together, could it result in a complete negation of something? (e.g. -100% hostile duration, or -100% area of effect, or -100% healing, or -100% action speed) then yes, it's affected by inversions. this is basically why inversions exist, so that you can have an additive system without worrying about accidentally creating enough negative modifiers that you have 0 or less than 0 effects unless you deliberately want to completely negate something, e.g. Enfeebled affliction.

second. "how do these things stack?" the 'easy' answer is that they are not quite as strong as multiplicative effects, but are nonetheless roughly similar in impact. so a -75% PEN penalty functions like a multiplier of .25x. Two -10% hostile duration modifiers functions like a .9x modifier and a .9x modifier multiplied together. Remember, it's not exactly like this, when it comes to combining multiple negative modifiers it's much more moderate, but it should give you a rough ballpark on how strong or weak modifiers are when combined together.

[Smart Barbarian]

28 minutes ago, summatsupeer said:

I was thinking of going the the Spirit Frenzy/Tornado because I tend to struggle to get tanky enough to let them all attack me at will, even when wearing the heaviest armour and damage reduction items.

I'm not sure what i'm doing wrong on the defensive side, maybe I don't pickup the best armour early enough or didn't lower enemies penetration enough?  I tend to rely on companions way to much then think i'm being too defensive and just need to kill enemies quicker to reduce incoming damage.

super heavy armor + dazed (-4 PEN) can really help with survivability. add in hard/robust from another source for an additional +2 AR (not from barb, because you probably want to save those resources on HoF), or drinking/crafting potions of spirit armor for +3 AR. in the best case, having enough difference between your AR and enemy PEN means enemies get their damage quartered (it's almost as strong as multiplicative effect, so even enemies with tons of damage bonuses will do piddling damage). even if it doesn't always help with crits (crits getting 1.5x PEN is really hard to bring down), it at least means that the normal hits aren't hurting you for that much anymore.

w/ konstanten iirc i ended up wearing magnera's chain (which is A+ armor due to it being only medium and covering its weaknesses really well) and dazed was good enough for most fights. i would occasionally drink a potion of spirit armor if there were *lots* of baddies. the funny thing is, the damage output becomes so huge at higher levels that survivability becomes less of a problem because you're just able to run through enemies a lot faster.

 

in terms of outside assistance, a lone priest--mc or sc--could probably help a lot - just cast barring death's door if you're getting hit with way too much burst damage, and hopefully your barbarian has cleared some breathing room before it runs out. a pet that restores health to party on kill (or self, if this is your mainchar) can help with sustain a lot. (edit: also said priest could drop triumph of the crusaders on the barbarian and in any fight with more than like two bad guys your barbarian is basically immortal from the massive health gain) 

[S4 - Standalone Seeker Slayer Survivor mod! (Beta/Feedback thread)]

7 minutes ago, Noqn said:

edit: my reading comprehension is not the best, did I misunderstand your question?

no you got it, thanks

[Corrupting Beauty & Avenging Storm]

i think i'm going to have to update my guide with an entire dedicated section for all the avenging storm interactions and cheese opportunities that have been discovered over the past few months

[S4 - Standalone Seeker Slayer Survivor mod! (Beta/Feedback thread)]

is there any issue with me swapping out my existing S4 mod with the modified recipes (hidden or not) if i already have a game going on?

[Horns of the Auroch lash]

you jerk, i just rolled a single-class lifegiver to take advantage of a lot of the new interactions you discovered, and now you found another one for me to keep track of! 

[Smart Barbarian]

to op: i had a SC barbarian build that was HoF + retaliation + axes. I did have dazing shout, but I only used it for survival and engagement, not to spam.

i still had retaliation, and i think you're going to need that because HoF is just so expensive so you won't have it too much. but even w/out spamming shouts, this can be extremely effective - konstentin (whom i built this way) went from weak-sauce in party damage, to #1 damage dealer. and konstentin isn't particularly optimized for this setup (i would put way more intellect and might).

retaliation is good here, even if you're not deliberately optimizing it, because with blood thirst you will randomly get free instant attacks with your axes from killing enemies with retaliation. this means more bleeding stacks, which means higher likelihood of more blood thirst triggers, etc. it can really spiral out of control. it's a massive payoff for single-classing and just one ability point.

and yeah while HoF is expensive, it does work well enough with axes. it lets you spread bleeding debuff very quickly, and getting extra bleeding stacks gets you to the "Break-even" point I mentioned in my previous post much faster.

 

edit: also used the blood frenzy one in this setup, not the spirit one. staggered/terror from the spirit frenzy are anti-synergies/redundant with this setup, whereas extra bleeding stacks is A+

[Smart Barbarian]

20 hours ago, Boeroer said:

The Battle Axe modal is so good that you should keep it on and not deactivate. Especially once you got Blood Thirst and Barbaric Retaliation. 

nit: i would adjust this and say that you *shouldn't* turn it on all the time until you get the higher level stuff.

kinda depends on your party, but i remember some quick math I did where there's a point where the extra damage from the battle axe modal finally makes up for the massive recovery penalty, and i was surprised to find that even in potd upscaled, i was not actually hitting that point very often with everything else going on, unless it was a boss or a particularly beefy enemy.

all bets are off once you get blood thirst though, you can really start snowballing.

 

edit: the calculus is probably different if you multiclass with another martial that has a better full attack option than barbaric blow

[Corrupting Beauty & Avenging Storm]

Pictured: Constentin in their Deadfire game, discovering new cheesy interactions never before seen to exploit Avenging Storm

[Losing companions who are not in party in ship battles]

Quote

All this to say, I wish you could level up party members from the overland map lol.

yeah, same same.

 

but did you know you could just swap characters in/out at an inn? you don't have to be on the overland map. it means you can't do it whenever, but it's "safe."

[Neural network-generated custom portraits (aka "Why haven't I seen anyone suggest this before?")]

what happens if you use the out-painting on some deadfire portraits, or the pirate-ship deadfire hero image?

 

man that outpainting is insane

[Trying to figure what PoE2 sold less]

On 9/13/2022 at 4:30 PM, Yougottawanna said:

I wonder if they'll release updated sales figures now, all this time later... I would hope that the overall quality of the game (IMO) would lead to a healthy "tail".

Also Microsoft bought them and it appears that "Avowed" (FPRPG set in Eora) is still being made, so maybe they see potential in the setting - I certainly do...

most places like to keep these numbers close to their chest, unless it's something super huge to brag about. i think our best chance is another steam data leak and then extrapolation based on that

[Neural network-generated custom portraits (aka "Why haven't I seen anyone suggest this before?")]

[screenshots of avowed, an open world RPG that combines Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim]

Do any very specific pillars of eternity terms work? [Eothas sunbathing on a beach with Berath]

[Screenshots of Josh Sawyer's latest independent game, a pixel art Bike Shop RPG simulator]

[Deadfire and the darkside]

6 minutes ago, Vasvary5050 said:

a) Companions with a potential "dark side"- to be honest they all seem mostly on the side of "good". Serafen is a pirate but seems quite soft-hearted. Pallegina and Maia are both a bit blinkered when it comes to seeing the rights and wrongs of their factions but otherwise seem to be good aligned. Xoti can go down the path of the darkside if you encourage her to hold on to the souls in her lantern and is probably the companion with the darkest dark side that I've seen. Do any of the other companions have a dark side that can be encouraged? 

Vatnir is a sidekick so doesn't have a ton of reactivity, but I would put Vatnir as dark-side territory.

If you select the right reactivity/background, Aloth already has a bit of a darker streak, and you can reinforce this in the game.

After that it's kind of a stretch. I guess you could say Mirke is dark in that as a drunken sidekick, she'll go along with whatever genocidal plans you have in mind without complaining.

 

9 minutes ago, Vasvary5050 said:

The obvious archetypes which occur to me with supporting classes and skills are the cannibal (barbarian corpse-eater), the compulsive liar and conman (beguiler and/or trickster focusing on bluffing for his support skill), the cruel violent fanatic (Bleak Walker Paladin), keeper of the god's secrets (priest of Woedica and member of the Leaden Key?, or maybe priest of Wael) and if it was an option, an agent of entropy and the end of all things (priest of Rymrgand)

those all sound good flavor picks. i think assassin could also be worth considering. there's also an angle where you can take on the more sinister aspects of berath (offensive-oriented priest of berath) or nature (druid, pick up all the decay spells).

also for consideration are multiclasses with names that can lend themselves to a darker side, like zealot for woedica/berath (rogue + priest), or a bleak cannibalistic fanatic (bleak walker/corpse eater).

 

14 minutes ago, Vasvary5050 said:

By the way, how destructive can you be without completely breaking the entire game. Presumably there are somethings you can't do, like kill everyone in Port Maje island if you want to get your ship repaired and get off the island.

i would actually be surprised if you could actually lock yourself out of the game. josh sawyer pointedly tries to enable the "mass psychopath" style of play. i was on reddit where i saw an insightful comment that observed that all the factions have two possible leaders, and they are on different maps, so it's impossible for the player to ambush a faction without warning and leave it completely headless (and possibly break an end-game encounter). so the game is designed to be resilient against mass murder. i would actually be very curious to know what would happen if you tried to kill everyone in port maje (i know you can kill all the huana without any problem, don't ask me why i tried that; but i didn't try killing the vailians).

[Neural network-generated custom portraits (aka "Why haven't I seen anyone suggest this before?")]

wow - i know that stable diffusion's corpus (controversially) uses a lot of stuff from deviantart and such, so it makes sense it would likely be able to understand pillars of eternity more.

i have a decent gpu at home, i need to get it a try.

with your first rogue art, even though the eye is kinda screwed up, at the same time it looks like an intentional effect (e.g. scarring).

[Neural network-generated custom portraits (aka "Why haven't I seen anyone suggest this before?")]

also the wizards are quite good if not quite the right style

[Neural network-generated custom portraits (aka "Why haven't I seen anyone suggest this before?")]

do some variations on the orlan art! can you feed it multiples at once for one set of output? just to help guide it a bit?

 

also lol:

Quote

 

[Good/earliest level for doing DLC content on POTD upscaled?]

8 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

He seems to single out Deadfire as being super easy and talks about how you can just set up the AI for your characters and leave it to handle everything. Conversely, I'm finding PoTD upscaled to be plenty difficult, with lots of enemies with very high armour.

this is almost assuredly on the assumption of playing on "Normal" difficulty.

I think PoE is "special" amongst CRPGs because the hardest difficulty is actually a balanced difficulty mode, with encounters/etc deliberately tuned for it (in fact initially all the magran's challenges were intended only for PotD mode). This is in contrast to most other RPGs IME, which simply just multiply damage (skyrim, BG) or dramatically inflate stats (P:K/WOTR) or are intended as a niche challenge (IWD/2 heart of fury, FO4 survivor mode) and so are more like throwaway difficulties just for masochistic try-hards (I say that as a frequent try-hard myself who still generally doesn't indulge in the hardest difficulties of all those other games). So I could easily see someone with lots of RPG experience unknowingly sticking with "Normal" (or even Veteran, which is the main other difficulty advertised as broadly-accessible) and then being surprised at how easy it is.

 

edit: personally speaking, I find PotD satisfyingly challenging even now (though I do turn on some magran's challenges as well). I don't do the cheesiest strategies, so that keeps the difficulty up. Most of the head-banging-on-wall difficulty I've smoothed out over the years by developing a pretty optimized path through the game so I'm never underleveled for a quest/challenge (and sometimes deliberately overleveled, like for Family Pride quest or the Hanging Sepulchers, which can be brutal at-level), but even then I still have fights that I have to reload several times for. And it's a common joke around here that the hardest part of the game, especially on PotD, is the first island.

[PSA: hazard effects are *super* good on TB mode]

I've been giving TB mode a more serious try thanks to @Noqn's beta S4 mod, and I discovered an interesting thing that I hadn't known before:

1. many effects that do periodic damage have their damage multiplied to simulate 6 seconds of time passing as one "round"
2. hazard effects tick like every second (it's why their damage numbers frequently look so low), so their damage gets 6x-ed
3. most persistent aoe effects only trigger on specific initiative points each round. (This makes it really easy to run in and out of e.g. a tanglefoot or a chill fog without getting hit. lucky for humans, enemy AI is too dumb to exploit AoEs like this.)
4. TB mode hazard effects, however, trigger both on initiative but also while moving into or through it.

all these points combined, especially with #4, means that every "unit" of movement in or through a hazard effect on TB mode triggers the 6x-ed damage. If you can kite enemies, knock them around, terrify them, or somehow just get them to move around, you can do a sick amount of damage with hazard effects.

I discovered this with Wall of Thorns - ordinarily does 4-5 damage per hit on RTwP - it's 6x-ed to 24-30 on TB mode. I had hobbled enemies stumbling through it wracking up tens of damage with every "unit" of movement, not to mention the additional "tick" of 24-30 damage just from the once/round effect. Easily did hundreds upon hundreds of damage in one fight alone.

There's not a lot of persistent hazard effects in the game, but I anticipate these all become damage kings on TB mode:

• Wall of Thorns
• Wall of Flame
• Wall of Force
• Wall of Draining <-no damage, but probably lots of drain
• Wall of Many Colors <- not sure if damage gets 6x due to the way this is implemented, but enemies do trigger the color effects a lot

LMK if I missed anything.

Interestingly, in the tooltips, the damage isn't 6x-ed for hazard effects like other durational things, so it must be a dynamic adjustment done when someone is hit. Given that movement/trigger damage is unintentionally 6x-ed, I wonder if priest seals (electric and searing) also get 6x-ed despite having no duration?

[Good/earliest level for doing DLC content on POTD upscaled?]

BoW at 13/14 can be rough, but I typically do it at around ~14 and have a couple times done it around late 13 (though that's pushing it and I believe I relied a lot on chanter summons). It basically boils down to your party build:

• your ability to interrupt the main BoW antagonist while they are trying to cast Llengrath's Safeguard (or: if you have a way to repeatedly dispel effects)
• how good your balance of sustain and damage are. BoW has a decent number of bullet sponge enemies that can attrition you out if don't have enough damage or enough sustain (including the main BoW antagonist and the optional secondary boss fight).

I think those are the main difficulty considerations. (There's also some really annoying kith-like enemies, by far the worst are archers that love to use Confounding Blind... I can't decide if the bullet sponges or the archers are the hardest part of BoW).