thelee

early on i thought builds w/out access to withdraw (and by extension, BDD) were effectively impossible b.c. of vela's fragility. it's made the successful runs without a priest all the more impressive. even with cheese, the ultimate is a massive test of patience and consistency and withdraw/BDD at least is a bit forgiving[1], so the fact that a few ppl have been basically able to tightrope without a net underneath them is all the more impressive. on paper, strand of favor/brilliant/etc exploit might seem trivial, but it really isn't [1] in my actual run, iirc i had two almost disasters, despite tons of practice. the ability to drop a withdraw on vela and yourself (and/or invisibility) can be quite literally the life saver.

i'm still trying to carve out some time to more properly put it through its paces, but a few quick thoughts blunderbuss doesn't appear to be in the initial set of superb gear? i double and triple checked but i don't think i saw one what about turning down the initial gold and the per-match gold rewards? to make purchasing stuff a bit more strategic decision what do you think about splitting up the accessories between different merchants? there's just so many, it feels like it takes a while to find items to buy through the long list and if they were subdivided somehow that'd help. simlar thing with weapons - maybe split 1h and 2h weapons betwen different merchants to make it easier to find through them? though i had less problem here because it feels like there are a lot fewer weapons to go through what about a few non-unique items? i was trying to find gloves of accuracy, for example. i ended up settling for the unique gloves of the dungeon warden, but that wouldn't suffice if i wanted more than one character with them. same thing with other non-unique accessories.

i think the big thing for me is enemy rogues. they frequently dual-wield and rogue abilities are all interrupt on hit. while i prefer GLoH, HoL does fill its niche pretty well, because especially around the level I get it (SC or MC) those skeleton rogues on PotD start appearing everywhere and they can be absolutely punishing in the early-mid game w/ no chance to react to multiple hits. (and i don't think the timer on their ability cooldown script is shared between their normal strikes and finishing blow, so i feel like i often see a relentless sequence of crippling/blinding strike -> finishing blow = interrupt-locked to death)

yeah the test is very annoying, i actually recruited my wife to stand around bored so i just had a spare set of hands to start/stop the stopwatch repeatedly while i was clicking around to move. yeah, +50% -50% is equivalent to being in a chill fog (+50% recovery penalty) as a swashbuckler (-50% recovery time bonus), which is a killer and obvious speed up.

honestly this is how i thought food bonuses did work for much of my playtime, since the way you set them up is more akin to setting up an extended passive bonus rather than, e.g. drinking a short durational potion. maybe this is too much of a buff, though honestly maybe it's a necessary change to make a set of rest bonuses and consumables more useful since they're no longer trivially overriding each other.

wowowow this is great work. ...where do i install the mod on macOS? i'm not near my gaming PC for a while and only have my laptop edit: this is as close as I can see so far in terms of equivalent paths:

yeah this is why i prefer greater. non-interruptibility can be a life saver, but often times i feel like the bigger threat is my tank or someone in dire straights has a CON affliction on them (and in a few situations late game, enfeebled even) and needing a heal. spending 2 zeal for the equivalent of a full-strength baseline LoH can make all the difference since you can't stack lay on hands. either way i agree with other folk on the zeal cost-effectiveness - most of the times i'm just using the 1 zeal base version and only using the 2 zeal one when i really need it.

wait, have you tried reloading a game? e.g. save, then reload (with or without exiting)? that seems to correlate with stacking for me, though imperfectly. but yeah, i find it to be extremely unreliable to repro. there's some additional conflating factor.

you would be right but your numbers are mixed up between poe1 and poe2. in poe1 you have a 50% recovery penalty, in poe2 you have a 100% recovery penalty. the inversions work out just right so that in poe2 you have no penalty whatsoever with shot on the run. (+100% penalty combined wiht an inverted -50% recovery bonus) if there's a bug, it's different than what kaylon says - in poe1 shot on the run only erased half the recovery penalty, in poe2 it seems by accident it erases the entire recovery penalty. but the talent is niche enough that it's not worth addressing imo. anyway, while niche, i think it's pretty handy for kiters or part-time archer/casters. once i learned that it completely cancels out the movement penalty for ranged weapons, i figure that once you have it there's no reason to not be running around in between attacks, which aids a lot in survivability and casting positioning. none of this applies to reloading weapons though. edit: further reading - https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/ranged-weapon-recovery

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.