thelee

heck, it seems like even for a non-solo run (since i barely touch the companions i've decided to not use for a run), you're better off rejecting extraneous companions. there's a lot of traps/locks around so it could mean getting to a critical level-up sooner, which really matters in early game difficulty

thanks for the clarification. this is a real weird mechanic you've uncovered here! does... quest experience also degrade from having companions in storage? or is it just some oversight with trap exp you think?

hi, this is super duper interesting, but can you clarify what precisely you're doing with aloth here? i thought you could only decide to get aloth at the ruins and that was your one shot, is there like an alternate way to recruit aloth? are you talking about a difference between dismissing at the inn versus the world map?

i guess my response is rhetorical - why would you personally choose one or the other? off the top of my head, i don't know what is particularly great about berserk in conjunction with SB. I can see Shattered Pillar being a great focus generator with swift flurry. Would you still want to use WotEP over monk fists?

is up/downscaling the issue? it might affect the effective trap level of the area as well.

isn't this already the case in vanilla? i've made a couple builds that use firebrand. i think right now it's a niche interaction rather than anything too powerful, so i don't see what's wrong with preserving/maintaining this behavior.

yeah this is a change from poe1. no more sneak attack bonus damage from a rogue with spark the souls anymore but it means priest can empower spark the souls and everyone gets a super charged zapper.

i can get the point behind the +4 level one. actually i might do it next time around and just blast through port maje. if the +4 level one also let me completely skip port maje, that'd be even better. it's kind of like irenicus's dungeon in BG2; i've done it so much that it's not particularly interesting (especially when everyone has like 1 ability) and i'd rather skip to the "real" game.

depends on the priest subclass. Woedica is weird, because it was added late, and really should have tons of interactivity, but IIRC has very little. You'll never get a huge amount of unique options, but every once and a while you'll get some extra dialogue options and occasionally an alternate way to avoid a skill check or bypass something. There's some examples in the FAQ link. In my memory, Magran and Wael stood out to me as having a noticeable above-average amount of reactivity, and I did Wael before Forgotten Sanctum came out, so I'll bet it got a lot more [if i remember the blocked dialogue options I had, priest of Wael give you an easy way to ]. Also in my memory, priest of Berath and Eothas didn't get much (ironic, considering the story). Yes, I played every priest subclass. (I used to stan priests pretty hard back in the day). Personally overall I was pleased with the RP options, especially compared to PoE1 (which basically had nil), and even compared to other deadfire classes.

yeah, straight-up single target damage is less useful on potd upscaled, just because how much health enemies get. DoTs, periodic damage, etc get much better because fights will last longer so you'll get more value. and even huge aoe w/ lower damage numbers will get you lots of value simply because of the number of enemies involved. ninagauth's killing bolt looks flashy on paper, but too many things need to line up for it to actually have some value... if you're using it as a finisher you might as well use death ring instead which hits aoe damage as well. you're right to be underwhelmed. probably fun spell to use on lower difficulties. imo kiling bolt is simply just much more scary in the hands of the enemy since the player has lower health totals and you don't have many defenses against raw damage and it really sucks getting your back-line caster/squishes one-shotted out of nowhere AND an additional enemy summon to deal with to boot. and the symbols are extremely good spells. once priests get tier 8 spells they start becoming DPS monsters. no way around it, it's just some hilarious power curve. consider it a pay-off for single-classing a priest. wizards and druids also get monster payoffs for damage in the end (for wizard: meteor shower and missile salvo can single handedly clear encounters and even some bosses for you, yes even on potd upscaled).

lol wow i thought it was bad enough that they had confounding blind

wow, so it seems like kith enemies benefit (or are hurt the most) from up/down scaling (especially if made more generous)? i don't think beast/wilder/etc types would get the kind of power curve that unlocking new class abilities would get.

that's interesting, i don't think i've paid much attention to enemy abilities from up/downscaling, i thought it was purely up/down-math of acc/def/PEN/AR/PL. are you sure your mod doesn't do any additional trickeries (sub in more powerful enemies?)

*slap face* today i learned

what mod do you use for that UI layout? the equipment layout looks neat

i actually think wael's challenge is much more deadly aspect--in conjunction with ondra's--since you have almost no indication of how things are going. you only have vague clues about the *other* ship, based on the art you see and how large it is. for that reason i only did as many ship bounties as necessary to get to the level i needed to get to and no more, it's way too much of a risk IMO, you just need a bit of mysterious bad luck and you die.

yeah. technically you could also do this with RTwP, but turn-based mode makes this much easier/less tedious to do.

I think the main concerns with turn-based mode are the game is not really designed for it (turn-based mode came later), so there are more trash fights and some extremely tanky fights than would be comfortable for a game built from the ground-up to be turn-based in broad strokes, some aspects of action economy that apply in RTwP don't apply nearly as strongly in turn-based mode, since turn-based mode guarantees everyone gets an action. in particular, armor is not nearly as punishing, and it's much harder to interrupt. so long as you are comfortable with that, you should play with whatever mode you prefer and just keep in mind that certain bits of RTwP advice won't apply. i would imagine that much of the joy from turn-based mode comes from the turn-based mode itself and being able to more easily make optimal decisions.

you'd have to be lucky! i don't think i've ever gotten an adra ban despite looting every pocket in all the cities with Loaded Pockets on. so you could easily go a game without finding one this way.

imo the action economy is worse if you want to be caster. unlike psion, you have to attack to charge up your focus. that's a huge drag on your casting ability that would likely cancel out the 20% damage bonus*. if you want to be a caster-focused mystic, you should just be psion. * unless you are all-in on kitchen stove + thunderous report

DALL-E mini is technologically impressive, but seems frustrating for a use case like this IMO. Though honestly I hadn't considered this use case before, so I'm excited at the possibility! I'm surprised you actually got something legible out of it (that you're even using as a profile pic). What i'd *really* want to see is someone with DALL-E access generating these portraits. Would also help solve my frustration at the lack of halfling portraits in WOTR.

did you have to just repair your blunderbuss alot? at 1% chance i imagine more often than not you're running it almost down to broken?

if that's what you're planning on doing, i don't think you're getting a full benefit from blackjacket. in RTwP, one neat trick a blackjacket can do is repeatedly fire from free weapon switching. so you can fire, switch instantly, fire, switch instantly, etc until you run out of weapon slots. you basically cut time between fire by an order of magnitude since you remove all reload time and are just down to attack time. in TB-mode, i don't think this works nearly as well, because while weapon switching can become a free action, you are still only limited to one attack/turn which is a really strong constraint on your action economy vs. in RTwP (e.g. it's not nearly as huge of an action economy boost as in RTwP). even in the RTwP case, the amount of damage you could burst is probably not going to be enough to power up a high-level ascension, since the amount of focus you need to generate to hit max focus goes up and up while you never get more than 4 weapon slots.

"turn based is just clearly superior, they said. [...] i have always preferred turn based" i'm begging people to use analysis that goes outside their own personal tastes. Pathfinder: Kingmaker/Wrath of the Righteous sold like hotcakes, and the vast majority of people who play that game (based on owlcat's surveys) play RTwP. PoE/Deadfire is janky? Yeah, you need to see P:K or P:WOTR in action. while i agree that over-appealing to fans on kickstarter can be a curse, one's argument needs to be self-consistent with peers in the industry, and not just amount to "i like playing turn-based games like DOS2 and Gloomhaven"

several years of deadfire and i only just now learned that a game-month has 20 days. of note - what's your build/apporach? i needed a lot of cushion because the skaen + salvation of time build that so many people did, the way i would very conservatively pre-buff, each fight would be like a half day on its own (that would get me buffed up to like 400-600s on my buffs). if you're using strand of favor clickiness you probably get a lot of time efficiency that i didn't know about/have in my run.