thelee

i think this is partly a function of UI and also partly a function that IMO deadfire really should've been an additive system with a very limited set of multiplicative effects, including crits and overpen. UI: crits are very obvious to me b.c. i have the "dynamic camera" enabled to do a dramatic zoom-in/slow-down if i kill an enemy with a crit. It doesn't have to be that showy, but for example that saber does lightning damage/self-heals on crit makes the enemy spark with a glow on a crit, which is also obvious. Hate to dredge up Pathfinder games here, but they explicitly bold/label damage numbers that are critical hits, so they are obvious. I agree overpenetration is also not obvious, but some UI treatment could highlight it, or even just meatier impact sounds. Mechanically: crits are generally just not that big of a deal. An extra +25% damage on weapons is not huge. It can be huge on spells, but it gets buried in multi-target effects. Coupled with overpenetration and imp crit and other crit effects it can be huge, but honestly crits would be worth paying attention to more if it was a 1.25x multiplier. Same with overpen. I do think grazes are extremely important mechanically. Going back to the pathfinder/D&D system, save-or-else effects really just do suck and feel awful to use and are extremely hard to reason about due to needing to have a huge amount of metagame knowledge of what enemy saves are like (or having to do a bajillion knowledge checks in tabletop). Grazes basically make every save-or-else have a default effect, unless the enemies heroically save against it, which some spells in PF/D&D system do (and I feel like these spells get valued highly by players as a result), but Deadfire/PoE just bakes in as a default which is nice. You don't have to pay attention to grazes mechanically, they just help make your life quietly less frustrating.

Josh Sawyer did an interesting talk on armor systems recently, with particular bits on PoE and Deadfire. nothing terribly new if you've been on reddit or on the forums here for a while, but it's interesting just to see how he thinks

it might be better as you level up. as higher levels, you would gain pretty good focus AND you wouldn't have action economy issues of having to attack to generate that focus first. it's pretty slow in RTwP as well at first. Auto-attacking or multiclassing with caster is a pretty good solution for psion (though again, once you start getting 2 or 3 focus/second [12 or 18 per turn iirc for turn-based] i think focus issues disappear rapidly onec you realize that you gain that focus even when casting powers.)

it's actually weirder - i think maxquest found that the game (accidentally) reverses a sign as part of the max health adjustment math.

hoo boy, that thread brought back some confused memories. iirc, your numbers are like that because you have an amulet of health? the game doesn't do math correctly when restoring health with amulet of health?

Hmmm, are you sure about this? I know when you lose a constitution affliction outside of combat, you don’t retain current health % and have to regen the missing health, but I feel like you retain current health % during combat (I see enemies sometimes go back up a health category when recovering from an affliction, which appears to be based on their “base” max health).

i did some testing to confirm some of my suspicions. here's what i've found: ranged movement recovery penalty only applies while moving (correction of earlier thing i said) ranged movement recovery penalty is +100% recovery time shot on the run does benefit from inversions and will completely cancel the recovery penalty suffered while moving (edit: so, makes no difference whether you stand still or move as a ranger with this. could be pretty handy for kiting) reload time is not affected by ranged movement-recovery penalty, instead it's paused your reload progress is saved if you interrupt it, so if you run around for a while, your remaining reload time should pick up back from where it left off however, in normal circumstances it appears there is a minimum reload time of what appears to be ~2.5s for most weapons, but arquebus appears to have a slightly faster minimum reload time of ~2s. so, as i mentioned in an earlier post, if you perpetually interrupt your reload, then you'll never be able to fire again since the animation needs to fully complete. however with firearms, there's a moment during the reload animation when you **** the gun (you can hear a very slight 'click' when this happens) and if you interrupt the reload at this point and then resume attack you bypass the entirety of the reload time (including the remainder of the reload time that you should've seen) and go straight to attack. [edit: lol erroneous forum censorship strikes again! "when you c.o.c.k the gun"] if Deadfire was somehow more of a twitch-y game like DotA or a fighting game, this means there's actually a "reload cancel" optimization you could do. in practice, i don't think this is worth the micromanagement since it's like tenths of a second in savings which, while possibly a substantial % increase, is extremely annoying to keep track of over an entire fight. i say "normal circumstances" b.c. if your natural reload time is shorter than the minimum reload time, then it uses your natural reload time (possible with dual-wielding, high dex, pistol modal) i know there's a further absolute minimum reload time (it's why one of the enchantments on a gun that clears recovery doesn't work) but with some simple testing with a console i wasn't able to find what that was (i got down to 1.5s and still obeyed the 1.5s recovery time instead of being capped)

at this point who should care? i pre-ordered but i would be more annoyed if ppl were locked out of pre-order items forever, which seems to be the case. i think some pre-order items can be accessed normally in-game (i read somewhere that was the case for the sabre), and the others can be got by console commands (and doing so doesn't disable cheats/achievements, for just those items), though someone better knowledgable would have to confirm.

ah sorry I completely was unaware that there was a version on the mac app store, i only thought about steam and GoG. is it a one-way breakage? are you able to take a steam save and use it in the macplay version? just trying to figure out if there's some clue on how to fix the save incompatibility. sorry you're running into this, that sucks.

hi, no developers here, but: when you say "MacPlay" I have no idea what that refers to. Is that possibly the company that ported Pillars of Eternity 1 (and not Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire) Because I just want to make sure you are talking about the correct games and moving files between the correct systems. Deadfire saves should be completely portable between different platforms, but that may not be the case for Pillars of Eternity 1.

may not have been just the flu, mate. this was probably the original intent, so this would be the best O_O-b

I think Abjuration affects the same targets as Dismissal. There's a critical "or" in the early part of the tooltip. To me, it wouldn't make sense to have two such similar but different effects otherwise. Yeah, I don't play a lot of paladins so I can't say definitively, but 4 Zeal for a single-target Abjuration seems... real lame. I'd much rather save that Zeal for heals or an exhortation. At least Abjuration can completely wipe out most of some late-game fights on its own.

Wow. Is it just cipher spells or multi class casters also benefit?

Biggest clue is if they have any skulls on their tooltip they over level you. If there’s no skulls they are at your level or lower. pretty sure you can look at attack rolls in combat log; everyone gets +3 acc/Level, so if their level-based accuracy bonus is less than yours than you’re good to go.

Agree to disagree, especially with a stalker in tow, which will inevitably sometimes force your hand positioning-wise. In particular, getting the super extra range on Call can be very nice.

Yeah Early on I pretty much only use the free Relentless Storm spell the fury gets. The survivability boost of disrupting even uninterruptible (either because of concentration or lame passive boost) foes in a huge area is just way too good. Late game I split it up 1-1, starting off relentless storm, and then as the fight goes on using embrace to lock down a couple foes. Boss fights I reserve exclusively for embrace. vs other spells for other druids I guess it depends. “Do I really need the extra crowd control?” Frequently I already have good other options from party members so I can pick up Plague or Natures terror instead. Embrace happens to fall into a particular boss niche that works for this build because it has such a huge base duration (beats out Gaze of the Adragan, can cast it more and in a multi class vs Petrify). For other druids I think as a second spell pick it’d be good.

This build started off b.c. after playing Wrath of the Righteous I really wanted to play a druid with a pet. By standards these days, this is a pretty "fair" build, but it has a pretty big trick up its sleeve in being able to completely petrify-lock bosses (long-time observers will have noted I talked about this minor tech for taking down dorudugan some time back, this is the first build I designed intended to do exactly that). Race: Hearth Orlan Stats: 10 might, 7 con, 17 dex, 20 + 1(white that wends), 15 intellect, 8 resolve Class: fury and stalker (as pet, I picked deer, but antelope or wolf are also fine) Skills: i recommend explosives, and as secondary it doesn't really matter but you can pick up religion to give a wee boost to your final weapon (though you won't really use it) Build Marked Prey, Sunbeam Resilient Companion Vicious Companion Protective Companion, Firebrand (optional in endgame, see notes at end) Takedown Heal Companion (respec to Merciless Companion after you get Revive Companion) Marked for the Hunt, Spreading Plague Loyal Companion Revive Companion (optionally respec this to 2h style if you pick up Play Dead) Hunter's Claw, Calling the World's Maw Stalker's Link Scion of Flame Takedown Combo, Rapid Casting Farcasting Spellshaping Play Dead (optional, if not, you can pick up 2h style here, or something else, doesn't matter), Embrace of the Earth Talon Hunter's Fang Improved Critical Survival of the Fittest, Rusted Armor Lasting Empower (not as useful if you're using a mod that fixes this so it doesn't grant +10% affliction durations everywhere, replace with something else) Weapon proficiencies: flail, great sword are most important Important Items: Boras (pet), Obsidian Wurm (pet), Bone Charm (necklace), Helm of the White Void (helm), High Harbinger's Robes (robes off Vatnir), Keeper of the Flame (flail) enchanted with Sweet Aroma, Sun & Moon (flail) with fire enchants, Ring of Focused Flame (ring), Vithrack Silk Slippers (feet), Potion of Ascension for megaboss fights, Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak for megaboss fights Additional important items: I play with extra challenges on, so I also used Drunkard's Regret (ring) with tons of Rum, though outside of this challenge you can rely on other items in pursuit of action speed bonuses. Story choices: find all the items in Beast of Winter and swear to become Rymrgand's hero; in SSS destroy all the souls at each checkpoint for a total of +8 acc vs vessels. In the Alchemist's Retreat, craft the recipe that gives you permanent +1 Perception. Party support: strongly encouraged to have someone with maxed survival with Ngati's Tusk, someone with morningstar proficiency, and someone who can cast Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment (wizard or priest of wael merc) How this build plays This build is basically a fire-based nuker for much of the game. Ring of Focused Flame and huge accuracy bonuses from Marked and Stalker's Link will help you land most of your hits, frequently critting. The spell echo chance on Sun & Moon isn't that great, but every once and a while getting 2x sunlance to finish off a target in one blow is sweet, so always try to fight during the day. After you get Vithrack Silk Slippers your spell echo goes up a bit (remember, they're not additive) and those sweet doublings will occur a bit more often for fire spells (and a tiny bit for everything else, including explosives). Early on, Firebrand gives you staying power after you run out of spells. Remember: ring of focused flame works for this sword, as does scion of flame. Later on, you have so many spells and in really big fights you'll be doing something else other than trying to nuke, so you can respec Firebrand out if you want, though it's nice to have as a backup plan or in really long fights *cough* SSS. Sunbeam is a workhorse spell for this build, and I highly recommend stays in the Bathhouse or even Nemnok pet for the mid-late game just to get extra casts of it; you get +20 accuracy from helm of the white void and ring of focused flame, a chance to echo with sun & moon, and you blind enemies, which significantly improves you survivability and helps you land other reflex-based spells. We pick Stalker just to give our pet extra survivability, since that's a huge problem with pets on PotD. It does mean you have to run along with your pet to new targets, but it's worth it just to not have our pet get knocked out as quickly. I picked Deer in the hopes of getting some decent extra damage from crits, and while Deer carnage is quite a bit better than you'd think, in the end it wasn't game-changing and you could probably do better with Antelope (stack on extra defense) or Wolf (for knock down). Fury is nice because extra PEN is always nice if subtle. The shapeshift form helps us get out of trouble with its teleport if an enemy grabs us while we're following our pet, or if we somehow got pulled too far away form the pet. The lightning bolt on that shapeshift form is useful for the entire game, even though it never scales (at least in vanilla). In a pinch, we can also use the shapeshift form to get rid of Firebrand; the need does come up every once and a while. What's really great about the Fury is the extra range. We also pick up Farcasting to stack it on. The massive flexibility in targeting is fantastic and underrated - being able to Sunbeam casters or ranged enemies from across the battlefield in order to blind them and force them closer to the fight is great, and you'll never have targeting problems with Call and Embrace. Pretty much obsoletes the fact that as Stalker we need to stand by our pet. Takedown Combo requires a bit of work to get full advantage of, but works great as a single-target boost for Call and Embrace, and is really fun to coordinate with Firelance - easily doing ~250 damage in one hit combined with other damage bonuses this build gets. With two Firelance combos in a row you can annihilate single targets in a "fair" way. In mid-game you can also spam Takedown Combo while you're alternating hits with Firebrand - doing big hits of damage while keeping an enemy locked down with interrupts. Hunter's Claw stacking is really necessary for this build to shine, and it really isn't hard to build up, just a bit of metagame knowledge to have an idea of what enemy types are common in an area. Between dual-wielded flails, one of which is Sun & Moon, you can easily max to +20 against an enemy type in two encounters, plus an empower point (late game, you can even do it in one thanks to you getting an extra stack of hunter's claw if both parts of sun & moon crit during the attack). The bonus damage from Hunter's Fang is particularly sweet because it's pretty hard to otherwise get a +20% damage bonus on spells. A few misc spells - Rusted Armor to give us a damage option against tough foes. Spreading Plague because, well it's actually quite better than you might think. Helps us land our spells, but also ensures Merciless Companion for very long periods of time across the entire battlefield, and in any fight with enemy healers that Weakened is fantastic. Also, this build suggests explosives. If you go that route, craft and keep supplied stunning grenades - between your high, perception-independent accuracy (since bombs don't count perception; remember you can have up to +60 vs a generic character thanks to helm, marked prey, stalker's link, hunter's claw, and survival of the fittest) and ~20 pts in explosives stunning bombs are basically an instant-cast guaranteed ~10s+ stun in the late game. This build also suggests Bone Charm. Even though it is an anti-vessel accessory (used to ensure Dorudugan triumph), I recommend just keeping it on because it also provides a nice +2 intellect bonus, and the summons are extremely powerful plan Bs for much of the game. Bosses This build is also meticulously calculated so it can do something like this: that's a paralyzed dorudugan, and with a net accuracy adjustment of +40, there's literally no way Embrace the Earth Talon can miss. In fact, it turns out this build was a bit conservatively calculated, because I discovered in this run that Hunter's Claw "suffers" from that bug where active rest bonuses become passive bonuses after area transition or save/load cycle, so it stacks with Devotions for the Faithful (neat!). Actual immunity to body afflictions is rare. Instead you face down resistances. And Petrify, in case you don't know yet, will get resisted down to "only" a Paralyze, which is still hard CC. With all your accuracy and a party that can churn out some dps, 2 embraces + 1 from self-empower is pretty much all you need to wipe out many bosses (with a cipher or other source of brilliant you can obviously do it in perpetuity). Someone who can cast Arkmery's Wondrous Torment will wipe out enemy resolve and last for a while itself and can also help the petrify/paralyze last even longer. Against megabosses you need a little bit more work to achieve the same thing, due to extremely high defenses and resolve in particular: potion of ascension for +2 PL someone (preferably a fighter due to the many ways they can improve their % chance to hit) with a morningstar modal someone with a club Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment some source of resource regeneration Ngati's Tusk on someone with max survival (though with the stacking "bug" you can just use this or Devotions) If you can get all that together, you can literally just let your characters run on AI script (the beastmaster just had a script to cast embrace when available, and my priest of wael merc just had a script to refresh arkmeyr's wondrous torment every 20 seconds and otherwise spam salvation of time for the resource generation) for dorudugan, for big chunks of hauane o whe (you'll need to manually target the embrace when the oozes start splitting to make sure you get them all), for belranga (after knocking down enough spiders), and for the guardian of ukaizo. (auranic is just too much of a technical fight to cheese outside of the standard spell-reflection approach I use). In terms of making sure you get to 20 stacks of hunter's fang - I purposely kept a few areas untouched (the bar in the shimmering isles for vessels [dorudugan/guardian], motare o kozi for primordials [hauane], since these two types have the roughest defenses [fortitude, reflex] for embrace) just to help easily boost to +20 right before the fight without having to replay a possibly-dicey SSS arena. Anyway this is where the build gets its name - with everything in place (incl potion of ascension and ajamuut's stalking cloak) along with a morningstar and either ngati's tusk or devotions, this build is designed to have exactly enough accuracy to always land embrace the earth talon without needing to spellshape for the additional +1 PL (hence AI scriptable). It is specifically a hunter of the biggest game. And every other boss, having lower fortitude, will succumb all the easier. edit: Psychovampiric Shield will also sap Resolve like Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment does, but ciphers also need to generate focus. Even with a psion, Arkmery's Wondrous Torment lasts a long time (longer than Miasma - the base duration really matters when you're facing down high resolve) and the other stat reductions really helps land refreshes of Wondrous Torment (since enemy also gets intellect penalty) and Embrace (since enemy also gets perception penalty), so I don't suggest trying to sub in Psychovampiric Shield instead of the recommendation for Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment.

with recovery and reloading, plenty of play with a streetfighter taught me that it doesn't apply until the next reload as well. it was pretty obvious to fire a blunderbuss and get the recovery time buff, reload, fire again, and then reload again much much faster.

hoo boy, if your googlefu is good someone many years ago commented on it, and had a mod that removed the need for shot on the run. there's definitely a penalty, but sorry no specifics. i tried to find the thread but had no luck. as for reloading progress - AFAICT the progress is saved, but there's a minimum reload time. the character has to animate - that animation can be really sped up to try to match up with the "true" remaining time, but there's a hard minimum threshold that they can't be sped up beyond. so iirc you can indefinitely delay reload by moving your character as they're wrapping up their reload. (there's a gun where one if its enchantments that can eliminate recovery does nothing because of this minimum reload time) edit: i found the original post. actually it was about pillars of eternity 1. there, the recovery penalty was +50%. no indiciation what the number is in deadfire. my best intuition based on the numbers involved is that the ranged recovery penalty in deadfire is +100%: 1. combat is generally intuitively considered/targeted at half speed of poe1 2. in poe1, the known penalty was +50% and the equivalent talent was -25% 3. probably implies they 2x-ed the numbers, +100% penalty given that the ranger talent is now -50% knowing what i know about how (in)consistently the designers tracked inversions, i would not be surprised if the net effect of shot on the run is that it completely eliminates the penalty (since -50% with inversions would cancel out +100% in penalties) edit 2: in poe1, i think it was a matter that the recovery only slowed down while moving, whereas anecdotally in deadfire it feels like the moment i have a ranged character move, their recovery slows down and doesn't go back to normal speed until i do another shot.

yeah, the -35% penalty--apart from being buried deep in the game mechanics--is hard to reason about, at the time it got added in, i saw it mostly as a "don't make 2w obviously the best choice across all weapon styles". so imo the penalty shouldn't be seen so much as a penalty to worry about, just as something trying to keep the power level in place so you don't feel like a complete dummy if you decide to do 2h weapons for offense instead. they did the same for turn-based mode, except across the board. (1h style is still unfortunately a very niche offense style)

i missed this thread until i got tagged in it. thanks for the kind words about the FAQ in general, and also i fully am open that my guide may have big holes in it - i definitely cannot grab all the meta or interactions that might be really relevant, i just try my best, it is also now an extremely huge piece of text and it's not always obvious to me what might need updating. in addition, the SA was written really extremely early in the game's metagame history. while i still stand by it as a general thinking of the class, since then a lot more interactions and optimizations for it have been found (including simply just that it benefits from weapon damage bonuses, which wasn't obviously known at the time, which i updated to add but didn't really expand on the ramifications of) that can make specific approaches sing really well instead of just as a focus dump. i'll take the criticism and make sure to update the language a bit more thoroughly the next time i have enough pending changes to make an update.

yes, like i said the math gets very complicated when you start adding in bonuses. the inversion nature of -35% penalty makes the math non-linear. the penalty is really really severe if you don't have enough bonuses to cancel out the inversion (you need ~+50% of damage bonuses to cancel it out), it's a worse drag than a multiplicative penalty, but then once you overwhelm it you get 1 for 1 gain out of every additional damage bonus - a massive step change. it's also the fact that we're not comparing a 1h attack against a 2w attack in a real situation - i was using that just to illustrate what the net effect on a vanilla 2w attack after penalties are compared. in reality, you're probably comparing a 2h weapon to a 2w setup or (for a very niche or off-meta build) a 1h weapon to a 2w setup, and that adds more complications (a 2h has +1 PEN and effectively is a like 1h attack but with a 30% multiplicative damage boost plus a +15% additive damage boost, a 1h has +12 acc and a hit->crit rate). my head is starting to hurt. anyway it doesn't change the tl;dr that dual-wielding full attacks are generally advantageous across the board compared to alternatives for various reasons, and also damage is not really the main window one should be thinking about in terms of abilities, since OP was asking about ability selection. versus weapon styles; for weapon styles, i would dual-wield a rogue simply because i want to maximize the number of chances of landing a debuff or interrupting an enemy, versus trying to optimize the damage for like a handful of abilities you get to use throughout the course of a long fight. but for ability selection, i really don't think one should care whether or not an ability is a full attack or a primary attack. edit: rather, i think it should be the reverse - you pick abilities based on what they offer you and then you choose a weapon setup that complements it (e.g. if you use more full attack abilities, then weight 2w more strongly) versus trying to optimize abilities purely based on full or primary attack and what they might offer in terms of raw damage.

several interrelated questions here: - it's been a while since i did the math, but iirc in general the dual-wielding full-attack bonus is a sufficient enough penalty that it brings the damage in line with a full-attack 2h weapon (which is the same as a primary attack w/ a 2h weapon), though there's still an advantage in that dual-wielding weapons have lower recovery time and you get two attempts to connect. so 2w is still arguably advantaged, just not as obviously as much as before. - compared to a primary attack, a 2w full-attack is basically a 1/3 damage bonus (w/ rounding) over a primary attack - you have a -35% damage penalty on each attack, which means if you just somehow duplicated your #1 weapon you get a 65% attack and a 65% attack = 140% net damage. so, a sufficiently high primary attack damage bonus would make up for not getting a full attack, but no, a mule kick's damage bonus alone would not do it. - keep in mind that the explicit damage bonus isn't everything. mule kick also gets an accuracy bonus. Accuracy also lets you do more damage over the long run, by increasing your crits, hits, and grazes compared to hits, grazes, and misses. i did some math a long time ago and in general (ignoring low/high extremes) each point of accuracy seemed to translate to ~2% net increase in damage (not the same as 2% damage bonus. for various reasons, a 3% damage bonus also translates into a ~2% net increase in damage, so in this way might and perception are very closely balanced in general). so adding on mule kick's +10 accuracy, its net damage bonus is closer to 36%, which is comparable to a vanilla 2w attack, but that math quickly gets complicated once you start adding in more bonuses and penalties. (complicated enough that when i say "back when i did the math" what i really mean is that i created a script that simulated the equations involved for thousands of scenarios to figure out what a general trend line was) - similarly, penetrating strike has a bigger damage bonus in practice than on paper, because you should really be using it when you need the PEN bonus. in that vein, +2 PEN can constitute as much as a whopping +200% damage bonus when it helps you go from -3 PEN to -1 PEN. it's getting so, so complicated. in the end i would argue though that just looking at damage is not the point to focus on for many abilities. Damage is just there to sweeten the cake a bit for spending a finite resource for knock down/mule kick. Ultimately the point of knock down/mule kick is a powerful interrupt (i almost don't even care that mule kick gets disorient, except as a way to get further +10 accuracy from helm of the white wind). Ultimately the point of penetrating strike is to help dps down a hard target in underpen situations, not just for the +25% paper damage + full attack. sap can be better if all you care about is interrupt and resource efficiency, but it's not supposed to fill the same role as strike the bell, so you need to be clear about what each ability is actually trying to accomplish. if all you care about is damage on a rogue, for example, you really have no reason to do anything other than spam crippling strike over and over, even compared to sap. but the rogue has plenty of other abilities worth taking for reasons other than efficient damage. (and it's worth highlightging that on potd, enemies end up with so much health in high-level fights that optimizing for damage on finite resource abilities is not a great idea imo anyway, so in that sense penetrating strike becomes kind of a trap choice)

you don't have berath's blessing on for loaded pockets? big if you can actually pick pocket even just one adra ban

aha! sorry i fudged together what you were saying about hazard spells vs beam spells. the no PL scaling is news to me! i suspected something was up for a certain class of spells (i never seemed to get more lightning bolts on returning storm with level ups), but it's good to have this confirmed more broadly