thelee

Flavor choices are one thing, but regardless of how "realistic" it is in practice to go up against a god (and keep in mind people DID successfully blow up a god in the lead-up to poe1), people generally want their protagonists to be able to effect change. I think it's amusing on an intellectual level how nothing you end up doing matters (even having Wael destroy Eothas, or bringing Waidwen to plead the case does nothing), much in the same way it's intellectually amusing that Indiana Jones has 0 impact on the outcome of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but in a less intellectual sense it's also unsatisfying. You don't have a character arc, so you're left with your impacts to judge your story, and you have zero impact on the crit path. Perhaps if the writers had put way more emphasis on the factional conflicts in the Deadfire (where you can have massive impact) and treated Eothas as a much more abstract mcguffin, or really let you make meaningful actions in personal vengeance (instead of throwaway lines), there would be less complaints about the main story. But as it is, the crit path is treated as a monumental story beat, the factions are pretty much optional, you have flavor text that takes you to the same dialogue outcomes, and so you could easily end up with an experience where you're mostly interacting with something that you have no impact on. I get why the main story is a recurring criticism. edit: i watched a game/story analysis video, and one thing that stuck with me was their claim that you can either have lots of meaningful reactivity, or you can have a strong main story. You can't have both. Everyone loves talking about FNV but it's worth pointing out that you could specify for yourself in starkly different ways the fate of New Vegas and its surroundings because anything else would make all the reactivity and impact of the rest of the game a lie. I'm not sure it's workable to have lots of places of impact in the Deadfire, but then have a main story that must end a particular way (the wheel gets destroyed). Anyone remember the controversy over the Mass Effect 3 ending? Imagine that, except you don't even have the two or three blunt choices on offer at the end. I think if the writers had been willing to let go of prescribing an ending and truly let you have on impact on the fate of the wheel and Eothas and your relationship with him/them, that would be a lot better, even if it makes a direct sequel challenging.

Sawyer also mentioned that despite the effort it had very little payoff. Some people may not talk enough to trigger relationship adjustments, other people might stumble upon a degenerate way to get two characters to hate each other within like 30 seconds. I don't know if it was the same talk, but he said he really liked how Disco Elysium ended up doing dialogue adjustments and would lean towards that approach.

Something not "external" - I think someone got their ultimate run DQ-ed because they alt-f4-ed out of a (buggy?) world map encounter that killed them and tried again. the logic being that they could've known that was a risk.

For me I think you've hit a lot of the good points. They put so much work into the engine for this game, that I really wish they could leverage that and make a PoE3, saving costs by keeping most of the internals working with some minor tweaks under the hood to polish turn-based mode or enable a few fancier graphics and faster load times. It might not be an AAA game, but "poor sales" in this context is really just a mismatch between expectations and reality. For a lower budget, the same sales could be amazing. Lord knows that Ubisoft and Arkane and Bethesda are all just using the same engine (with modifications) between their games in a similar way. I really think they could do PoE or classic BG style and just voice the main lines. While I'm impressed with how thoroughly things are voiced, I think this is culprit #1 in soaring costs (that needed high sales) and makes every little change or DLC that much more expensive to produce. I've played plenty of other recent-ish games that aren't fully voiced, and I don't feel like I've missed out that much, honestly.

I think there has only been the twelve so far. The Ultimate thread continues as long as people chime in on the Ultimate thread If the Ultimate thread hasn't had activity, then there hasn't been much activity. I would imagine it's a function of: anyone who wants to try knows what the main classes are and the metagame for that hasn't changed, and the people who did different classes (like the psion/troubadour most recent) don't appear to be forum regulars sharing their tips or video playthrough.

After 1600+ hours this is the first time I've done a combination of: - turning on Hylea's challenge (requiring you to escort and protect Vela) - having Rekke in my party as a primary companion Eventually Rekke learns common, as anyone who's used Rekke might know. What you might not know is that at one point Vela and Rekke interact and it becomes clear that Rekke is teaching Vela Seki. (in German because of my mod/I'm learning, but roughly translated: Vela: Hello Rekke: Have you returned for more Seki lessons? Vela: Do we really have to? Rekke: [something something in Seki] Vela Vela: [something something in Seki]) Just never fails to impress me how Obsidian adds these little bits of reactivity (with voice actors, no less) in extremely obscure situations that ~1% of the player base may ever encounter. (e.g. how many people have ever turned on hylea's challenge? and then played long enough with rekke for rekke to learn common?)

my only specific recommendations are stalker's link (for +10 acc and engagament), marked prey, and hunter's claw; that's a general recommendation for all rangers.

it's been a while and it's in an older notepad so i'm not quite certain overall, but i'm almost 100% sure i was a hearth orlan who maxed perception (with white that wends), with intellect as second-highest stat (maybe at lowest 15, but probably 16). 21 perception is pretty much my standard for mainchar these days, because it makes megabosses so much easier. the endgame plan for a beastmaster is to take advantage of all that accuracy (up to +50) and spam embrace the earth talon on dorudugan and hauane o whe. don't need to worry about all the technical aspects of a megaboss fight if they're perma-paralyzed. (edit: it's a bit more complicated then that [you also need to debuff resolve especially], but +40-50 accuracy makes all the other math easier)

for beastmaster it's all about that (ranger) accuracy and that bonus AR. bonus accuracy is great for landing good spells for any MC. shifter boar/cat form are already extremely powerful, extreme accuracy makes it extremely easy to overcome possibly the main weakness early on on PotD which is a lack of tools for a shifter to overcome enemy AR (crits do a great job of doing that) or high defenses. stalker's bonus AR propels all shifter forms to heavy armor tier, and bear form to exceptional heavy armor, all with no recovery penalty and no AR weaknesses, and combined with autoscaling is quite a huge leg-up in early PotD survival, whereas normally you're stuck with limited amounts of vanilla heavy armor (which still has various AR weaknesses) or upgraded medium armor for much of the rough early-mid game. coupled with the bonus deflection and add in a woodskin at the start of the fight and formerly scary foes are barely hurting you. Family Pride, for example, is an extremely rough quest if you take it on relatively early and do a non-pacifist take, and I ended up stomping the bardattos and valeras into the ground without breaking a sweat, propelled almost solely on the back of my beastmaster. (i'm doing a SC shifter now and while it's still powerful especially with single-class ability progression, not having the bonus acc and AR really does make it a bit rougher by comparison. kind of hard to express how much of a difference just +1 AR can do, especially on bear form where it can likely put enemies from -50 to -75% damage malus, which is a halving of damage done) ward ranges are limited, yes, so I had to periodically re-cast them to reposition at times. It was fine for me - for that build I typically didn't have barbarian abilities outside of frenzy for much of the game, so I felt free to re-cast wards. If wards are re-cast, the ward that gets vanished doesn't trigger the "destruction" penalty for the furyshaper.

i did a beastmaster build and it was so effective, i actually got bored of it and re-rolled, so take that what you may i would actually suggest furyshaper, but only because i'm a berserker skeptic because of the malus. i had a furyshaper/stalker and it was real effective. barbarians are special because they get much more returns out of perception/accuracy than other classes. Because carnage only triggers on a hit (and then has to roll itself again), you actually have n^2 returns from accuracy at first, rather than the typical sub-linear returns... and unlike other scenarios where accuracy drops off in effectiveness once you have enough, barbarians can get a passive that lets them interrupt on crits, which in my opinion keeps the practical effectiveness of sky-high accuracy quite high. so the huge accuracy from a ranger won't go to waste. bonus AR and deflection can help you withstand the -15 -10 def penalty of frenzy (bonus AR goes great with Thick Skin barbarian passive), and eventually (if you want) you can upgrade Hunter's Claw to give you defensive bonuses (which I did).

a fun trick i did early on was use it in conjunction with a large shield modal. the immobility doesn't matter much when you can hop around the battlefield and you get huuuge defenses as a result (massive deflection bonus from large shield, temporary even larger boost from escape, plus the massive damage reduction from the modal). good for tanking in a pinch (or on a character like eder, just a great tanking solution when facing down a bunch of enemy rogue archers).

FYI in case it wasn't clear, unbroken still gets bonus engagement and bonus to engagement attacks even without a shield. I've actually contemplated using unbroken without a shield for this reason (though usually i prefer blackjacket).

last time i checked in vanilla (was pre-5.0), in the combat log i see critical hits, but the effect doesn't change at all for carnage. same thing for grazes - still same effect. so it "crits," but whatever carnage does doesn't interact with anything else related to crits. (carnage really is its own thing)

I think difficulty matters here a lot because of extra/upgraded mobs on PotD? What is OP playing on? Even if fighters get extreme engagement counts, on PotD+upscaling hold, in practice for me positioning makes it extremely hard for a single beefy character to protect all the squishies (and Into The Fray has terrible hit rate early on), unless there's a doorway. Two beefy characters can generally suffice though. i generally tend to slot in a third character, while not really a tank or off-tank, can at least survive some melee punishment for a little bit for cases like the fampyr fights mentioned upthread or when you're just being flanked from all directions in a street encounter, so they can keep the even squishier party members still standing. I occasionally do this, but only really mid-late game when the person I'm peeling off actually has enough tools at their disposal to survive being so isolated, or if it's temporary. Most common example is simply just a rogue or other melee-dps type diving straight for a critical caster, though sometimes in some dungeons I just need a character to take an alternate route to engage the enemy because they're blocked off and I don't have leap or something. (though now that i'm using druid more, druid has enough close-range spells worth using that i find myself leap-ing or running around on their own more often for optimal targeting) but again, only mid-late game really. early on, my rogue trying to take out a skeletal sorcerer will get hit by one arrow and lose half their health and they don't have any escape or evasion skills. only rarely worth it.

well to my confusion, carnage does technically crit, it just doesn't do anything special

carnage as well or no?

is this really the case? i double-checked my guide for my notes and what i have there is actually a confusing mishmash, so i'm not so sure (and i need to clean up those notes). for some reason my current understanding is that blood frenzy/storm only procs on weapon attacks (based on my understanding that carnage crits doesn't trigger it). I know spirit frenzy (but not spirit tornado) works on spell hits (incl carnage).

(assuming you mean arcane knight here) if you're including tactician for discussion, then i would say a battlemage no question. if for whatever reason tactician is out of consideration, then i'd defer to ppl with more solo experience, but battlemage still seems strong if less obviously so (you'll be mostly doing casting and fighter offers more assistance to casting than paladin does)

yeah i would start by just making a copy of one of the default cipher scripts. then, if you find it too spammy or doing an ability that you're constantly changing/cancelling, going in and tweaking whatever conditions are controlling that ability (the default AI scripts probably don't do anything overly tricky and so there's only one obvious rule controlling that ability). that's probably a lot more incremental and less immediately overwhelming approach than starting from scratch. it could even just be a simple matter of increasing the timeout (little number at the top-right of each rule that tells you how many seconds before it tries the rule again). edit: i program for a day job and played FF12 (gambits) so i'm used to thinking in kind of the way that AI scripts force you to think, but even then it's hard to predict what rules might be actually useful in practice. as a result, most of my scripts are honestly just copies and tweaks of existing scripts that have just gradually gotten more complicated over time, incrementally. the plus is that any changes you make to AI scripts are saved separately from your saved game - so sometimes if I'm in the middle of wiping on a fight, i'll make some tweaks to an AI script then, and when I reload I'll be able to try a fight with the changes already in place.

i have a really hard time micro-ing ciphers if they're not my mainchar (which i naturally pay more attention to as a personal psychological bias). i put on an AI script, even if it's suboptimal, because when serafen (or ydwin) starts doing something, it's very obvious, and is a great time for me to be like: do I want this to happen? if not, i pause the game and change what they're doing if i do, i just let it happen and thank the AI script for using focus that would've just been wasted so i would personally recommend setting up an AI script, even if it's just the default (though honestly I would copy it and add in an appropriate minimum focus requirement, because by default the scripts are way too spammy and don't let focus accumulate). though personally i don't know what the big deal with mind blades is

yeah, forgot to chime in that aside from the weapons summon and the dragon summon (for SC), getting 100% uptime on summons isn't really worth the bellower's time. i would also be careful since it hasn't been explicitly mentioned - the bellower PL boost is a temporary buff that appears on your character and expires after a few seconds, which means the "Eld Nary" is almost a trick choice for a bellower despite looking great on paper - the projectile and bounce in RTwP is soooo slow that the PL bonus will expire before you get the best benefit from PL scaling (the extra bounces). On turn-based mode, it's awesome though (since you're guaranteed to have a PL buff that lasts a round, and your guaranteed that your invocation ends before advancing rounds).

i mean i agree with sharidian; there was certainly one game-breakingly good hunting bow (persistence), but the vast majority of hunting bows were too niche because of how vulnerable they were to DR. it's been a while, but istr that you were just better off using warbows most of the time. i remember having to make a conscious mental adjustment in deadfire to using hunting bows as a damage machine.

you should check out that link in my post the tl;dr is that mig is less relevant because of essentially a math bug. because ApplyOnTime is so weird, the game has to figure out a per-tick damage, and it divides your MIG bonus by the number of base ticks, and then accidentally divides it again by the number of ticks. So your might bonus is significantly diluted by the base duration of the effect. Intellect and PL scaling work normally though.

I put it in my guide, but there are so few that I can just try listing them off the top fo my head (there are so few that it almost just seems like a bug that these were all applyovertime instead of applyontick) priest cleansing flame cipher disintegrate rogue deep wounds ranger wounding shot edit: whoops, forgot about druid taste of the hunt

wael + rogue (streetfighter in my case), wael + fighter (a monastic unarmed training build) remains some of the most enjoyable builds i've done from a MC/priest perspective. you'll do less buffing, because you'll be burning spell casts on Arcane Veil and Mirror Image a lot for massive protection. getting gaze of the adragan and arkemyr's wondrous torment at high levels are also fun. skaen works for a martial multiclass, but honestly i'm a bit burned out on the subclass because of my deadfire ultimate run so i don't have specific recommendations for it. it sounded like you were interested in eothas, though, and honestly eothas doesn't offer as much for offensive martial multiclassing. i did try eothas with a paladin (kind wayfarers) as well as with a beckoner, and it was pretty acceptable play for both, you just give up on some direct offense in favor of indirect offense. though given your preferred stat spread, maybe the latter two are angles you want anyway (my beckoner wielded a shield and acted as kind of an off-tank with lots of support spells, so missing out on e.g. might and accuracy wasn't a big deal because most of my power came from lots of summons). both of these will definitely work. i'm also going to put a plug in for Bellower. Not as much flexibility/cheese potential as a troubadour, but can do some insane things with all the extra PL you get on invocations, and the flexibility/cheese potential loss is somewhat made up for by being MC with a priest. ascendant with SoT is also good, but can also get a bit boring. you pretty much only really get much use out of ascending once you have salvation of time (otherwise the focus efficiency isn't nearly as great as a single class) and non-trivial fights can play out extremely same-y once you unlock that spell. almost literally any priest build will be viable for megabosses so long as you have a combination of brilliant, barring death's door, salvation of time. they will basically carry your party. you need some special handling for auranic and hauane's cleansing effects, but a priest puts you on extremely strong foundation.