thelee

Hey um, this is definitely not fixed in 1.1. I just rested on the world map with two drug crash effects, and they are still there.

It's not about clearance. It's about veteran rpg players using most of their (full) party and resources avaible to them. If you're drinking healing potions then the fight is difficult. This difficulty already exists, and it is called levels 1-8. The whole thread is about what happens with difficulty after levels 1-8(10/12 depending on your game). Unmodded game for now has such XP curve and XP rewards, that you overlevel MOST of the content after 20 hours or so. It's not about theorycrafting here; you simply overlevel monsters hard very quickly. This is really the key. You can beat the overwhelming majority of fights in Deadfire even on the higher difficulties without ever engaging with potions, other craftable items, even enchanting gear. You don't even have to worry about party composition or good builds. Now don't get me wrong, the original game wasn't exactly super difficult. But at the very least, engaging with these extra gameplay elements allowed you to do things like clear out dungeons or wilderness areas more rapidly. So at least the player got to enjoy some benefit from taking the time to invest in powering up their party. The problem is in Deadfire, there's much less palpable benefit to making your party better. So long as you're avoiding the knockdown and thus wounds, there's literally no difference if you win a fight at one health point and exhausting all your abilities, or not. Moreover even when you do use empowers and suffer wounds, camping is such a minimal cost that there isn't any "agony" in the decision making. You rest, burn some very minor resources and boom, you're just as well off as a party that maximized the use of every system. I don't expect the rest triviality to change much because there would be such an uproar from anyone not interested in a challenge, but I would love for there to be a magran's challenge that did something like prevent usage of any common food or drink for resting, or like limit it to food/drink of value >$some_nominal_amount (everything else just becomes rations for sailing) just so resting feels a bit more constrained and thus injuries and per-rest empower limits more meaningful.

It's not about clearance. It's about veteran rpg players using most of their (full) party and resources avaible to them. If you're drinking healing potions then the fight is difficult. This difficulty already exists, and it is called levels 1-8. The whole thread is about what happens with difficulty after levels 1-8(10/12 depending on your game). Unmodded game for now has such XP curve and XP rewards, that you overlevel MOST of the content after 20 hours or so. It's not about theorycrafting here; you simply overlevel monsters hard very quickly. You're saying you're disagreeing with me, but you're saying the exact same thing as me Literally right after that selective quote, I wrote (bolded added): My clearance rate comment is directed at all the chatter about objective/real world evidence, where none is being provided. In the absence of said empirical data (and truthfully, Obsidian has way more data than us because they have telemetry and we don't), them running through the encounters with a powergamer on staff is "good enough" for me, and it shows, because when you're playing the early game at levels the quests were designed for, PotD actually feels like I can't turn my brain off and just autoattack my way through. The problem, as I've constantly repeated and maintained, is that there just aren't that many natively higher-level encounters and quests (i.e. ignoring upscaling, because upscaling can slow down how trivialized a difficult encounter can become, but won't maintain it or make an easy encounter any harder).

it's in the dropbox link in the original post

What if only 20% of people beats the game at all, does that mean 80% of the game can be cut content and empty locations like Ukaizo is? The smallest part of players who beats your games and gives you criticism & support are those who will buy your next game, and every other one after it. That's missing the point. I think we can all agree that PotD that is beatable by 100% of the player base is too easy. The more you crank up the difficulty, the lower the clearance (heck, even attempt) rate. But what is an "appropriate" difficult level? A 0% clearance (i.e. literally impossible) is clearly too hard, so somewhere in between. But for all the talk about empirics and "real world evidence" that people like cokane are going on about, there's no actual empirically-derived and measurable/objective threshold people are putting forth, other than essentially "difficult enough for me" which is not anything objective and purely anecdotal; "difficult enough for me" is so wishy-washy that only like 100 people in the world could beat it, and half of those 100 people would be still be going on about how there's no challenge.

Gregorovitch, when he said: But there's also a broader point to be made about who the game is designed for, and how important high-level difficulty balancing is. It's more important for a traditional CRPG with a niche but fervent fanbase, but if Obsidian want to make ends meet, the bulk of their time is not going to be spent, at least pre-release, on tweaking numbers for optional side content on a difficulty setting that a tiny proportion of users ever try. I made this point earlier, and I'm going to make it again, because it's an absolutely critical question: what do people mean by "hard"? I think people are just saying "hard enough for me" which is not a good enough definition. What if only 1% of players could beat the game on PotD? .1%? .01%? My point about encounters just not being designed for level 14-20 isn't just my opinion, if you go look at the native levels for the quests, they are significantly front-loaded to mid-low levels. Obsidian went through the game with a power gamer on their staff and retuned accordingly, and barring an objective metric, I think this is "good enough" (and i await magran's challenges for further difficulty tweaking). The problem, again, is that they retuned all the quests/encounters that they currently have, which is heavily weighted to lower/mid levels, and there's hardly anything for higher levels. Scanning through this list, there are only two level 18 quests: Nemnok and Lost Grimoires, and those run concurrently (so you can't really count them separately). There's nothing higher. Paradise of the Mind isn't on this list, but I suspect it's level 17, 18 at the most. Considering that being at party level (quest_level - 1) is probably the right spot for a challenge at higher levels (due to super linear power creep thanks to getting more unique gear and better abilities), that means for levels 18, 19, and 20 there's literally nothing in the game that you can use your sweet high-level gear/abilities on in a worthy fashion. So basically, give me some DLC with a lot more high-level encounters, tuned in the same way that they tuned 1.1 PotD. I think that would suffice. People still complaining at that point will probably never be happy unless they're playing an original rogue-like.

lolololol it doesn't even have to be the same area. i just left that cave the save was in, on the world map. i sailed from NW of map to SE. about the center of the world map i start hearing the implosion charge sound. so it really is a global effect, across any map.

To reproduce: 1. throw an implosion charge. 2. there'll be a "zzchunk" sound effect of everything being drawn in, on loop. it'll keep playing this well after the implosion charge wears off. in fact, it'll keep playing it even if you quick load the game in the same area. i'm guessing some "play sound effect" scripting thing is globally enabled and never turned off. the only solution is to quit the game entirely and return. here's a dropbox link to a save and output_log where one character has an implosion charge. just throw it wherever, and then reload the game: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5etl8s4sba29lfw/AACmhmk1g8scNrJYJCmj07R_a?dl=0

They should just give the players a +x levels slider for PotD. I feel this matters more at the start of the game when there's less stats on your characters. Late game when everyone has 100+ accuracy it doesn't matter if an enemy has 80 or 100 deflection anymore. This has been brought up before in this thread, but mathematically it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters for rolls is the difference between your accuracy and deflection - the absolute values don't matter, just the difference. Each level everyone gains 3 acc/defense, so as long as enemies scale with you, everyone just stays at mathematically equivalent relative stats. But anyway, all this is a sideshow because the reason why it doesn't feel like it matters if an enemy has 80 or 100 deflection in the end-game is because most encounters aren't tuned for very high level fights. Like I said before, even if a xaurip scaled upwards indefinitely to level 20, it would still be a xaurip with lame abilities. It would not be hitting you with meteor shower or protecting itself with minoletta's sigil or cloak of death. As I said before, I continually maintain that the base difficulty in 1.1 is fine, there's just a huge dearth of encounters/quests that target level 14-20; the game is definitely weighted to levels 1-13 heavily. I mean, it makes sense, because I imagine most players will stick to the critical path and a minimal subset of the other quests; and it shows because I think we can all agree that PotD feels decent for that level range (especially on the low end at port maje and shortly after). but for us who want a hard PotD for level 14-20, there's like... some bounties, bekarna's quest, nemnok, and shimmering island and that's pretty much it before ukaizo and half of what i just named you're already over-leveled by like level 15 even if you use scaling. i'm really hoping the DLC can help out here, which it did back in poe1. i just want dedicated islands and quests that are tuned for level 14-23 (yes, 3 levels higher than the player, and i want that to mean enemies with PL10 abilities unavailable to the player even) in the same way that the base deadfire game is tuned for level 1-13.

Odd bug. The first time an encounter you cast Salvation of Time, the duration of beneficial effects gets extended by 20 seconds, not 10. If you cast it again that same encounter, you only get the 10 second extension. Though if you ask me, given Deadfire's slower combat compared to PoE1, a 20 second extension is closer to an appropriate power level for a PL6 spell. (I'd even settle for a 15s extension.) Here's a dropbox link to an autosave right before combat: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/iaupyhvdbxn6og2/AAB80zCZJxOY5IyLBLCEJEn7a?dl=0 To reproduce, enter combat, start some beneficial effects, and then cast salvation of time. even though combat log/tooltip says "10 seconds" for the effect, you actually get double that. With this save, you'll have to empower the PC to get another cast of salvation of time. Do that, and then try it again in the same encounter. You'll only get a 10s extension the second time.

But I would say that DM is the crucial difference there. I have never done any P&P roleplaying but I have no doubt a per-rest system can work very well in that context, because you have the DM there who's probably not going to have you take a nap after every fight (and presumably, in that sort of setting the roleplaying component will be much more pronounced so most people wouldn't want to either). But of course P&P also offers much more flexibility in getting around a fight and such. If your party is exhausted and your casters low on spells, and they spot some unfriendly ogres on their path, they can maybe just go around, or prepare an ambush, or attempt to scare them away / convince them to leave (using an illusion spell maybe, or just a really convincing / intimidating character). Hell, they could set fire to the surrounding forest and drive them off that way. And I should imagine that in P&P gaming, beating a tactical retreat is actually possible as well (realistically, having seen you off the ogres are probably not overly interested in chasing you to the ends of the earth). I would love for this to be actually possible in computer games as well. But you'd need an equivalent of a DM in the game to be able to do that, and in general an engine that allows for vastly more flexibility. That is very hard to actually do, of course. I seem to have side-tracked somewhat, but yeah... per-rest systems work just fine in that context. To me, it never felt it translated at all well to cRPG. The cost of resting and time elapsing is just too ambiguous for it to balance very well. Which isn't to say that per-encounter doesn't have flaws, it clearly does. Having longer-term tactical aspects and being incentivised not to use the same abilities every fight are certainly things I would like to see very much as well (and in general, more organic design than discrete resource pools and spell levels and power levels and such). I don't thing 'per-rest' can properly accomplish that though. Have you tried the Baldur's Gates and the Icewind Dales? You can get ambushed while resting in dangerous areas, or while traveling through dangerous areas. I'm not saying the balance was immaculate, but there are better ways of limiting rest than gold/expendable resources. All that meant was that you quick-saved before every rest and reloaded if you got ambushed. It was dumb. It was doubly dumb in BG and IWD (versus BG2 and IWD2) because many ambushes were nowhere near balanced for even a partially resource-expended level 1-2 party so if you didn't reload you would probably be game over-ed anyway. (Same thing with ambushes when going from map to map.)

PL is not a separate multiplier for spell-based or spell-like abilities. It is a base multiplier for martial abilities. That's why you can do obscene damage with something like Inner Death. For spells, it is treated as an additive bonus like might. I have a power level mechanics thread here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/99409-mechanics-power-level-compilation-thread/

Update: being blinded does prevent being affected by gaze attacks, as this screenshot verifies: (Chris is immune to charm gaze being Chris is affected by blind) But unless some tooltips and descriptions need to be updated, blinding does not prevent foes from using gaze attacks.

Cyclopedia and tool-tip clearly says that a blinded status affliction both prevents usage of gaze attacks and prevents being affected by gaze attacks. Well, by golly, my CHARNAME just got hit by a charm gaze from a blinded fampyr. Screenshot of combat log of my CHARNAME clearly being hit by a fampyr that has been blinded: Verification of that fampyr being actively affected by a blind affliction: Dropbox link to save right before fight, along with output_log. CHARNAME has some cinder bombs you can use to trigger the blind: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ultluu02ihahx47/AADkuKzXYw1-Gb-k1rHgQ3Kfa?dl=0

Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that the way deadfire is balanced, consumables are potentially much more powerful than non-consumables (which tbh makes sense because consumables go away after one use and deadfire's economy is decently balanced enough that it's hard to keep up with aggressive usage). No, in the sense that power level scaling isn't too relevant compared to the base effect, because it's that base effect that gets amplified. A crappy base effect that gets +100% is still crappy compared to a decent effect that gets no power level scaling. Put another way, +50% damage/+25% duration on PL4 grenade or cinder bomb is good compared to no power scaling with Chill Fog, but grenade and cinder bomb had good base effects to begin with. You could get +80% damage/+40% duration with PL1 sparkcrackers or stun bomb, but you're starting from miniscule damage/duration numbers (for stun bomb) or weak effects (distraction from sparkcrackers), so even though the scaling would be huge Chill Fog would probably still be a better general purpose use of your time in such a situation.

Small update: added info on how scrolls do PL scaling. Not to toot my own horn, but if anyone thinks this is worth being a pinned post, I wouldn't mind.

While prior poster seemed to think limited rest supplies was a constraint (I personally played it as such), aside from this example (the only one I can also think of), most players treated limited rest supplies as "time to go through some load screens to travel back to town" which is why Obsidian decided to ditch it. Deadfire is actually closer to state of the art, imo, with its heavily per-encounter system. Because when designers know that players have full resources for every fight, they can balance for that, instead of assuming that a player is at like ~80% or less, and thus rest-spamming becomes incredibly powerful (rest-spam and turn on "fully heal on rest" for most IE games and you'll obliterate most encounters). BG2 was only notable because a lot of its wizard fights "cheat" because wizards are expending all their resources as if that's the only fight they'll have to deal with (which is true, from an AI perspective) and theoretically your own casters were a bit more constrained. Up until a certain point in 1.1 PotD, every fight is like a BG2 fight because everyone is spending all their resources possible. Again, I maintain that the main thing missing from 1.1 PotD isn't encounter difficulty, just a lack of a significant amount of encounters tuned specifically for e.g. levels 14-20, and not just ones that are level-scaled to tha tlevel.

Actually, I'm not sure drunkard's regret works at all. The only reason why I thought it was working was because I was feeding my character with Mariner's Porridge, whose description says "a remedy [...] for hangovers". Apparently it actually does keep away hangovers. If I use literally any other food, I still get hangover effects from alcohol, even though I have Drunkard's Regret equipped.

Hi, upon further experimentation the problem is specifically if i rest again using alcohol, the hangover effect occurs. So, to clarify: 1. equip drunkard's regret. 2. rest, using alcohol. 3. rest again, using non-alcoholic food -> no hangover effect (works!) The issue: 1. equip drunkard's regret. 2. rest, using alcohol. 3. rest again, using alcohol -> still a hangover! (does not work)

I definitely had Drunkard's Regret equipped when I rested with Meppu on my main character. I rested again with Meppu again, and sure enough I got a hangover effect from meppu, even though Drunkard's Regret says it should grant me immunity to hangover if worn while drinking. It has worked on other alcohol, so maybe it is Meppu-specific issue. Dropbox link to quicksave after resting with hangover effect, along with output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8nkvhpu0qeh1a9f/AADQJEqi2dQanjPTFjTcvL1La?dl=0 I also included an autosave of when I first entered the level, before I rested.

Do you though? Because last time I took Mule Kick it didn't replace Knock Down (pre 1.1). boy, i'll have to load up my game, but i could've sworn it got replaced. baffling if not.

greater lay on hands is almost strictly better than lay on hands, yet is a separate ability. this seems like an oversight. for example, "mule kick" in the fighter tree is strictly better than "knock down" and sure enough when you get mule kick you lose knock down. there are some power-level scaling issues, but surely there's a way to have greater lay on hands use the level scaling of normal lay on hands, right?

Wow I even use greater lay on hands and never noticed till just now that I still have the original lay on hands. Definitely seems like a bug to me.

Upgrades are not always strictly better. Sometimes the extra perk just gets suppressed or is not needed and the original effect is worse due to less power levels affecting it. Paladin Lay on Hands is an example of this. If you were already getting the inspiration bonus from another source (or don’t need it), you are better off just not using the upgrade at all since it will heal for less and not last quite as long due to PL. Hm, the PL scaling is something I didn't think about. It sounds like a bug if some abilities retain their original PL while others get the new PL with less scaling. If you have specific examples, you should report it in the bug. I would only think it's not a bug if it was consistent one way or the other. By the way, ignoring the PL issue, even if the extra perk is suppressed the fact that you even have that perk to be suppressed still means it is strictly better. Having the option (even if suppressed) is better than not having the option at all.

I could be wrong, but the "natural process" that existed before the wheel was what rymrgand wanted, which was life to slowly snuff as nothing got replenished. At least, rymrgand was the one god who seemed pretty-OK with eothas's plan in one of your council-of-the-gods meeting. EDIT: oops got ninja'd by KaineParker. this is what I get for leaving a tab open for more than an hour before looking at it.