thelee

Is it possible the final fight (with the faction that you piss off) was missed in the veteran/potd rebalancing? I realize the final quest is only like level 16 or something, but with upscaling enabled the named dragon at the ukaizo harbor was skulled even at level 20, whereas I'm close to one-shotting everyone in the final confrontation in the Grand Promenade (literally Mirke had swift flurry on, and one crit at the start of the fight had a couple of follow up crits that took out Queen Onekaza II in one go). I mean, it's possible this is meant to be a throwaway fight, but considering you're fighting the leader of a rival faction I always felt like this should've been a bigger fight. Not actually a bug, but just something that strikes me as odd; this is the second time I'm doing it post-1.1 and both times (once against the Principi and once against the Huana) the fight was extremely easy (virtually just autoattacking) compared to the Ukaizo Harbor dragon fight, which required some actual thought.

I recently did this fight in 1.1 on PotD, and in addition to the dragon and the two titans and a bunch of adra skirmishers and the like, two extra adds spawned. I forget what they were called - something like "adra witch" or something. They actually spawned after I had taken out the dragon, so it seemed like a fun little extra challenge in the 1.1 rebalance. I just did this fight again (right after 1.1.1) in a different PotD game, and they didn't spawn. I don't know if it's because they were on a timer and I just beat the fight too fast, or if the spawn trigger just didn't work. One thing I noticed is that after the fight completed, there was a lone adra skirmisher off to the side who had never entered the fight; I wonder if his presence prevented the two additional adds from spawning, since they seemed to trigger off everythign else being cleared; in addition this time I killed the dragon before I finished the titans (I had stasis shelled one of the titans so he/it was out of the fight for much of it), so I don't know if that changes the trigger. Anyway, here's a dropbox link to a save just when I arrived at ukaizo and one after the fight, along with the output_log. Sorry for being sort of vague, I literally don't remember what they were called, but they weren't the titans and they weren't the many adra skirmishers that charge you at the beginning of the fight. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8q56p2faxpk5gj1/AACwqMZ5Obg66kKRirWMg_NWa?dl=0 If I feel like getting some extra credit and try this fight again and see if I can get the adds to spawn.

it's easier to do in something like xcom because it's more self-contained and events much more discrete, being a turn-based game centered around encounters. it would work less well in something like deadfire because even in bounty fights (which are self-contained), there are so many things happening that it could easily be a chaotic system where if you're just one second off from casting a spell the second time you re-try the fight, the fact that there's a stored seed becomes moot because of all the cascading changes that occur. and in the xcom reboot IIRC you could still "blow" a bad seed by reloading some turns back and doing something different with the information you had that e.g. the enemies overwatch attack would all hit.

Yes, very well said. I don't think "you can save scum that away" is a very productive criticism of game design. In games with a liberal save option, like all these RPGs, you can say this about any challenge in the game, whether it's random or not. You can say this about even the role play conversations, about thieving, about any major plot decisions you make. Disagree strongly. "Save scumming things away" for example is the reason why Obsidian went with unconditional skill checks in Fallout: New Vegas and IWD2 versus their counterparts by Bethesda and Bioware, and it made skills much more meaningful when you actually needed some level to pass, and not the minimum and some patience to reload. No amount of save/reload is going to let you pass a hard Speech 80 check in F:NV. Similarly, for example some of the "challenge" from earlier discussion in BG/BG2 is just stupid save-or-else death spells (or might-as-well-be-death spells) or traps, or (especially in low-level BG) just a couple rounds of bad rolls (e.g. your squishier characters getting critically hit at just the right moment). The fact that you can save/reload that challenge away speaks to the sometimes stupid amount of variance that was present in those games that had little to do with skill.

OK, it happened again just now (I noticed I had a naked Fassina while screenshotting to report a different bug), and there was no arcane dampening in action this time. It was truly strange: I noticed somethign was up because my fassina was back to using her rod and I was going ot summon another weapon. But all the conjuring weapon spells were greyed out - and I noticed that I still had ~6 seconds left on my Citzal's Enchanted Armory. Have no idea how I entered this situation. But I'm guessing that once that counter hit 0, I lost all my inventory with Fassina. I'll report back if I figure out better what's going on.

1. Enemy casts Minoletta's Piercing Sigil. 2. Attack, get bounced away and stunned. 3. Arcane dampen the enemy. 4. Verify enemy no longer has effect listed. 5. Attack, still get bounced away and stunned. Screenshot proof of warlock with no sigil having just knocked back my charname: Quicksave of encounter where it happens, with output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fzl3af96gco65ey/AAAFgEa1INXFDknT1GOZ8lBCa?dl=0

Priest of Wael gets Gaze of the Adragan as their PL7 bonus spell. Except while you do get it when you unlock your seventh power level, it gets added as a PL6 spell. This is counter to other spells I've seen that get added from other spell lists; for example Xoti gets Vile Thorns as a PL3 bonus spell, and it gets added there, even though natively it is a PL1 spell on the druid spell list. See screenshot: Dropbox link to a save with the problem: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ybe9wq0c3ohngzr/AADq_Ao2k_OWBn6Q8u8mQ_fIa?dl=0

OK, so I'm pretty sure what happened is this: a) Fassian casts Citzal's Enchanted Armory. Currently equipped weapons turn into the dual-wielded scaling two-handed weapons, my current armor gets swapped with the scaling breastplate, and everything else goes away. b) Enemy mage hits Fassina with arcane dampener. c) Magical items go away. But nothing comes back. d) Combat ends. NOTHING STILL COMES BACK. The only thing that's left for me is the weapon I had in my other weapon slot, because that's the one thing that Citzal's Enchanted Armory doesn't vanish away. Screenshot proof: Fortunately, the autosave system is saving me here since I only lose about 30 minutes of gameplay, but I would strike this as a very major bug because of its destructivity. Attached is a dropbox link to an output_log and a pair of saves: an autosave when I first entered the drowned barrows, and a quicksave after the encounter that annihilated everything: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/woewa1cvh7saxks/AACnCrck_Wq45FVq768ZLRfAa?dl=0

Here's another dropbox link to a 1.1 quick save where two of my characters have drug crashes. Go out to sea and try resting out there, and the drug crashes will still be there: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ktzj2ar8jtb6wbd/AACOSi09pEs7zVQn5osMOCZma?dl=0

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.