thelee

With Avowed, something I've realized is that I think for a lot of people, the only RPG they've spent much time on is in fact Skyrim. There was a Sports Illustrated (?!) preview of Avowed that I found baffling, because it was written by an e-sports commentator who only does RTS's, who admits in their preview that the only RPG they've ever played Skyrim, didn't like it, and their preview of Avowed was "this is kind of like Skyrim... which I didn't like. If you like Skyrim, maybe you'll like it." (I don't mind people having their specialties and genre likes, but for goodness sake, please have some basic familiarity with the genre you're trying to cover for a job. Hilariously, I can't find the article anymore, it only exists on internet archive, so either they or their editor realized what a hack job it was.) But the more social media commentary I see, the more I see people who are like that journalist where I'm starting to realize they literally have no other frame of reference for an RPG. Whether they like Avowed or don't like Avowed, it's in the context of "it's like skyrim in this way... and that's bad/good" or "it's not like skyrim in this way... and that's good/bad." There are literally other ways to make RPGs. "NPCs in Avowed don't have their own day to day schedules" my brother in Christ most cRPGs do not do that.

here's the video link: the youtuber in question had an update and apparently by their findings it's not average, it's literally just the highest tier out of your loadouts and armor. so this would match with your theory. so higher armor only matters insofar as it's better than other stuff you got. so for casters, you can get away with just upgrading armor.

Sure, but I mean in games that have done well with this (BG3 and Deadfire loot) for casters things like weapons are just stat sticks, even if good or useful stat sticks. The ARPG philosophy is that weapon damage and quality is also part of being the stat stick, even if it doesn’t really make “sense” that a better axe helps your fireball. i don’t really express an opinion either way, I have enjoyed both approaches. It’s easier for item design to get lazy with the ARPG approach (BG3 itemization is probably the best itemization in a recent CRPG I’ve seen, D4 is very uninspiring despite everything being “relevant”), on the other side there is risk to have inadequate support for casters getting interesting gear (Solasta or core D&D/Pathfinder). armor is definitely odd though.

Armor being included into offense calculation seems to be assured. There was an unlisted video that got shared with me where the guy definitively shows him changing armor (and only armor), and getting a skull difference on his test target and his black bow ends up doing different damage. Im heading to bed but ill try to remember to link it here tomorrow.

It is definitely unintuitive. In the abstract I get it in the sense that everyone themselves has a “quality level” (normal, fine, exceptional, etc) and it means that casters do not get to bypass having to invest in gear. It happens with weapons in D4 and D3 (maybe other ARPGs) after Diablo 2 had tons of gear that was irrelevant for casters, so it’s not totally foreign to me, but adding armor into the mix is definitely new.

I can now at least give you an answer on that last part. Someone did some testing, and it seems like your equipped gear feeds into a tier level that also determines your spell damage (including how summoned weapons scale). this video shows the testing, with blackbow in particular: so, grimoire quality does matter, as does the quality of whatever else you have equipped along with your grimoire. edit: i followed up with the creator, and they showed that even armor matters (they posted an unlisted video in reply to me showing the test). it looks like the game computes some sort of score based on all your gear (either an average or a total count) and compares that against the enemy to determine damage bonuses and penalties. that's probably what's happening with the enemies, too. so don't skimp out on upgrading your stuff just cause you're a caster or you're good at dodging!

is there really no benefit for a one-handed style play? i would find it a little odd that you would be able to block and parry without a shield and just have an open offhand, but then there's no downside to just having a shield anyway.

this was actually pretty important to use heavy armor. damage reduction in this game has massive increasing returns, so the difference between heavy armor + arcane veil vs light armor + arcane veil could literally be almost a 2x in damage received. (it was more insane before arcane veil got nerfed, you could have 0 constitution and face-tank enemies on path of the damned with heavy armor, arcane veil, and a ring of deflection or something)

i can say that blast of frost (aka cone of cold) is also really good, just a boatload of damage, albeit over time. but nothing quite compares to how they implemented freezing pillar in this game, nothing quite like seeing from just a few meters away how you insta-kill a batch of enemies with a gigantic block of ice that falls from the sky. makes me want to roll with an SC Tekehu or frost wizard in Deadfire again.

There is a setting you can flip on, istr seeing some sort of “swap hand” option there while looking at all the customization switches to play with.

Like all nerfs on stuff I was using, makes me a little sad but it absolutely makes sense. It was just way too good, too easy to pick up, and outshone the fire and frost ring defense spells that came later, despite them requiring more investment to get. I think it’s still really good for early game PotD, it just no longer crowds out all other defense spells beyond that.

OK, i think i can more precisely describe what's going on. 1. Switch to a loadout grimoire that contains a spell you have an ability point in (in my case I tested with both Arcane Veil and Blizzard each with one ability point). 2. Cast the spell from your grimoire. 3. Note the cooldown of the spell when it finishes, it should have a cooldown reduction. 4. Now cast the same spell from your radial. 5. The spell "remembers" the cooldown duration reduction of the grimoire copy and has a reduced cooldown. Now, try it slightly different: 1. Switch to a loadout with a grimoire as above. 2. Cast the spell from your radial. 3. Note the cooldown of the spell when it finishes, it does not have any cooldown reduction. 4. Now cast the same spell from your grimoire. 5. The spell "remembers" that there was no cooldown reduction from your earlier cast, and the grimoire cooldown bonus is not applied to the grimoire cast. No matter if you keep casting from your grimoire from here on out, you get no cooldown reduction bonus. You have to re-equip or switch loadouts to reset this. This only affects grimoire cooldown. Essence cost reduction appears to work correctly (it correctly applies always to grimoire casts, and correctly never applies to radial casts). Switching loadouts to a different or no grimoire and back again "resets" whatever the game "remembers" the cooldown reduction should be.

ACTUALLY, something else is going on. I bought a grimoire to test with, and all the cooldowns seemed to work with learned spells. I went back to Boethel's, and now Arcane Veil (cast from grimoire) is working just fine with reduced cooldown. Maybe it was some transient glitch that was solved by re-equipping grimoires or swapping loadouts? No idea. disregard

I have Boethel's Grimoire at +3. I have skilled 1 point into Arcane Veil. Both Arcane Veil and Blizzard have 15s cooldown. From the grimoire, I should get a -15% discount on cooldown, so around 13s. When I cast Blizzard (from the grimoire), when the effect ends I get a countdown that starts at ~13s. When I cast Arcane Veil (from the grimoire not from the radial), when the effect ends I get a cooldown that starts at 15s. The only difference is that I have a skill point in Arcane Veil and know it independently compared to Blizzard, which I only know through the grimoire.

ah if that's the case, then maybe it's kinda OK? PotD is not really supposed to be the "f*** around" difficulty, at least without the "and find out" part. still, was a pretty rude shock. the day 1 patch really salvaged my current run.

plain fighter especially. power/inspired strike, inspired discipline, even sundering blows are costed way too expensively that in terms of how you actually play a fighter, an SC fighter doesn't really add that much variety to an MC fighter, you're still mostly a knockdown/mule kick engine.

yeah that would fix the unique system, but i got into my mess because i was upgrading different items, not realizing how rapidly expensive upgrades would become. the upgrade system as it stands right now is surprisingly punishing about not picking one weapon and armor and sticking with it, you basically can't experiment. fine and exceptional gear are also prohibitively expensive. when i was stuck in emerald stair at extreme gear-check levels, i was about to dump my entire net worth (and everything i found so far in dawnshore and early emerald stair) into buying one exceptional bow. because you can only either sell or breakdown most gear, it creates a very scarce economy with the two choices in conflict. while you can respec skills and stats pretty easily, the game being so gear-bound and so gear-scarce actually means you have very little room for experimentation. i wonder if a solution is that in act 1 fine gear is expensive, but then merchants in act 2 sell fine gear for less (and also fine gear in act 1 becomes cheaper), but exceptional is still expensive. at least there's a cheap "floor" for gear in case you go up the wrong path, character-wise. edit: according to the wiki, in early versions of the game you couldn't upgrade mundane items across quality tiers. i wonder if honestly that's a better approach and just make fine and exceptional gear a bit cheaper. upgrading a mundane weapon/armor/shield/grimoire from common +3 -> fine +0 is basically a trap in terms of how ridiculously expensive it is of your upgrade mats.

If you’re talking about poe1/Deadfire sneak attack mechanics, there’s no such equivalent in avowed. im using a bow as my main weapon and it works out pretty well. Them being silent *does* really matter if you one hit kill an enemy from stealth (doesn’t happen too often in PotD but you can ambush weaker mobs in a pack like this); enemies have a much harder time becoming aware in that situation. In some situations I can take out all the weaker enemies in a camp or encounter. Pistols definitely have the versatility advantage though. (I have a pistol in my secondary loadout so I can pair it with a grimoire.) As for dual wielding, you’d have to rely more on dodge or slides for survivability. Both are actually pretty good though blocking is def more reliable and parrying can be more powerful.

where are you people getting these numbers? honest question! i've been scouring around for these numbers, and this is actually the third distinct number i've seen. (poe wiki says 60%. i saw a reply to one of my posts on reddit saying 20%. this is the first time i've seen 35%) i don't see any tooltips in game that illustrate this. (before the day 1 patch i would get really weird tooltips that told me i got 0%) anyway, i think it's clear waht the intent of the unique scaling was (to avoid "wasting" resources on upgrading mundane items only to find a better unique that now you need to invest in), but it's a shame that it's so easily metagamable. my only thought is they should probably make resources a bit more plentiful and that you get back more resources when you break down upgraded items, and then not have uniques scale at all. this issue exists as it does right now because resources for upgrade are surprisingly scarce, even with thorough exploration. it me. before the day 1 patch that adjusted the scaling, i was hitting a lot of hard gear-check encounters. with the new scaling, i can actually progress through skill alone and incremental subtier upgrades.

oddly this is a common criticism that i don't share. perhaps i'm just too used to playing FPS's where you frequently find endless amounts of one of like a handful of enemy types (if you're lucky) [e.g. wolfenstein, far cry series, call of duty series, even like bioshock infinite]. if this were a top-down RPG like poe1/deadfire i'd find it extremely annoying (and did find the lack of enemy variety in Tyranny very annoying) but once i'm in first-person mode my brain suddenly switches and it's no biggie.

honestly you shouldn't, this appears to be microsoft strategy. I paid for the game so I don't have to worry about a subscription, but microsoft is clearly trying to push gamepass subscriptions, and whether or not obsidian gets to make more games like this has more to do with engaged players overall and not just sales data (which apparently is also good, comparable to outer worlds which was a decent hit).

yeah, a nice subtle gameplay distinction is that. back in the previews, i thought builds would be pretty samey because I was under the assumption that to dip into another tree you had to start from the beginning (like Deadfire or TTRPG multiclassing, Diablo 2/Skyrim skill trees, Outer Worlds perks). The fact that you can just jump right into the middle (or end!) of a tree so long as you meet the minimum requirements adds an interesting non-linear dimension to it and some interesting setups you can do.

one thing i miss from deadfire is the auto-generated tooltips that help explain a lot of detailed mechanics. this is the kinda stuff i puzzle about. i'm too focused on finishing the game with my limited time to do much testing (though i did do a few tests on frozen + explosive damage), but maybe someone will do this testing in the near future. (it'd also be great if there was a way to figure this stuff out from the game files... the lack of a combat log really makes it hard to introspect some of this stuff - like i was able to show that shattering frozen enemies with explosion really does a massive boost, but there's no damage numbers or combat log to examine)

progression is simpler than poe1/deadfire, but honestly BG3/5e has extremely simple progression--like literally almost no choices to be made for many classes--and yet there's no shortage of builds. (there are also more classes, but time will tell if we ever get more via DLC) i think there's build variety potential and we could use a forum space.

Have you tried 3rd person mode? That helps my wife.