thelee

is this hyperbole here? because i honestly find this perplexingly hard to believe, since i've used the magranite flamehtrowers to great effect in multiple runs

Probably not many players have played Deadfire nearly as much as me, but IME Deadfire has its pathfinding problems as well. In fact, the worst "clever" thing that Deadfire does is that it doesn't re-calculate your path if you click to move in roughly the same area, even if circumstances have changed (e.g. new obstacles); they just try to stick to their path and just do minor adjustments around the obstacles. This can lead to mind-numbingly bad/dumb outcomes (such as constantly running into an enemy and only slightly trying to move around them). I have to consciously press the "stop command" key (x by default) and then click to move, and that will cause the character to re-calculate their path. That being said, Deadfire is much more forgiving of bad pathing. Engagement is not nearly as ubiquitous as in PoE, and you are now allowed to move around (so long as it's in melee range) without breaking engagement. In PoE, one bad step and you suddenly got engaged by a bajillion beetles and then one more wrong step and then you suddenly get hit with a bajillion engagement attacks.

To clarify, they only set fires if an event is triggered. At 1 or less starts for a cannoneer, it's a 0% chance of an event. And it's not guaranteed, it is merely a heightened chance. Fire ammo also has the unfortunate effect that you cannot aim it (despite what you pick in the firing menu); it targets randomly. It will avoid attacking things that will have no effect (whereas grapeshot will continue to re-damage sailors who are already damaged, to no effect). Wyrmtongue is a bit of a garbage weapon, its main benefit is that it has no minimum range, but some of the basic cannons have a minimum range that is so low (150m) that it's not that much of an advantage for wyrmtongue to have 0 minimum range, especially since AI will frequently try to charge once you're below 100m. That being said, Magranite Firethrowers on the other hand are pretty OP. They have insane DPS. Put them on your basic ship or a voyager (ones that can turn around in 1 round) and just dance around 100m. Hold steady in between shots for super high accuracy. Even with 2star cannons, the frequency of events will be such that the AI on occasion won't be able to do much other than constantly try to shuffle crewmembers around. For a slower ship (2-turn turn), you can still make use of them, you just have to stay further out around 125m or so to buy yourself time to react if the AI decides to close the distance. Fortunately having more cannon slots (3+) means all the more DPS. Holding in between each shot and having good cannoneers (3+ star) becomes more important.

Souls can split, but they can also merge and become more powerful (see: Llengrath loopholing something in the wheel to do this), if you just recycle souls there's no mechanism to counterbalance this, so maybe Rymrgand is a check to make sure there's a natural grinding down of stronger souls?

Infinite. It's just on a long timer that happens once Ner gets to a low enough health, by my telling. So very important to interrupt and have decent offense (and/or a cleansing effect), or else Ner will keep trying over and over until it dies. the closest, best solution I can think of is in the vein of Diablo 3, where consumables are "equipped" but then infinitely usable but with a cooldown. That way it's less likely to induce hoarding behavior from players (there's nothing to use up, it's more of a "use it or lose it" per fight), you can balance fights around the existence of consumables, and you can predictably know that a player can't just spam consumables all day long. (By contrast, ahhh the days of playing Diablo 1 or Diablo 2 with an inventory full of potions and just keeping it open while facetanking enemies...)

if memory serves - everything spreads confusion at that point. it's such that without intellect resistance, perplexing sap one target (friend or enemy) will end up confusing *everyone* in the battle. i reported this a long time ago, and OBS said it was an ability that was top priority for being retooled, but i guess they never had the time to manage that.

the only downside to stalker's link is that typically your pet can only engage one target at a time, so the +10 acc is limited. however, if you boost your pet's engagement limit, you can spread that +10 acc throughout to more enemies in melee range. sources i can think of: tactical meld (cipher) and champion's boon (priest) both add +3 engagement, chanter's silver knight chant adds +1 engagement. i did maia as a geomancer and it was pretty effective, and i didn't even really try that hard. if i optimized her a bit, she probably would've wrecked house with extremely accurate CC and damage spells. as a completely theoretical example, a beastmaster (druid/ranger) could probably trivially paralyze (via embrace of the earth talon) even dorudugan: +10 stalker's link, +10 marked prey, +20 hunter's claw, +10 survival of the fittest (eventually), +10 helm of the void, +8 inherent embrace of the earth talon plus any perception and other item bonuses and PL scaling.

i feel it's pretty much required to take out the entirety of gorecci on PotD unless your mainchar is somehow super-optimized. you're fine.

Since Stadia is operated by Google and Obsidian is purchased by Microsoft presumably as a massive push for Microsoft-specific gaming, I doubt any OBS product will end up on Stadia. More likely to all end up on Game Pass. Even on a relatively new macbook pro with a discrete GPU, I have to tune down Deadfire alot and PoE1 quite a bit. Not a lot of people have dedicated CPUs they can put towards gaming. I'd be a fan of any option that lets me max out settings on modest hardware.

For historical reminder, this is what PoE1 did. Mostly text, with some key voiced dialogue. As I probably mentioned elsewhere, when Deadfire announced full VO I was pretty ambivalent about it, since I generally read faster than voice actors talk, and having voice actors talk interferes with my ability to read. As a general rule of thumb, I assume that any game with full VO had to sacrifice a lot in terms of dialogue reactivity depth. Generally I've been correct, and Deadfire is probably the first real time I've ever seen full VO *and* extensive dialogue reactivity. Not only was the VO expensive, it was probably disproportionately expensive compared to their budget as a result. Fortunately, the success of Disco Elysium tells me that Josh Sawyer's big concern has not materialized: that OBS had contributed to escalating the indie RPG cost by making it minimum stakes to have full VO for RPGs. I don't think many people complained that Disco Elysium was missing full VO.

Unconsciously is correct as well. It is probably even "more" correct, since that's what Freud termed the thing that everyone casually calls the "subconscious."

i tried all the pre-built ones, and they mostly happen to pick things advantageously so that you get some neat stuff throughout deadfire even if it doesn't altogether make sense (e.g. on top of the sacrifices everyone mentions, pretty much every single one lets you get whispers or blade of the endless paths), but the one big thing is that most get you get the devil of caroc plate, but at least two don't (rymrgand and "everything bad"), so something to be careful about. that probably matters a lot more to people than a random effigy's resentment buff. i did the "everything bad" background once as a challenge, and it was fairly amusing (though most of the challenge was earlier on since eventually you level/hire your way out of the downsides).

hilarious how with your current lash you can already one hit pretty much anything. sawbones is another item you can use to erase injuries, but has finite uses; same with the ring of reset. but i like the idea of sacrificing new hirelings to the god of cheese

funny that i learned this first from OBS forums than from my usual doomscrolling. about five years too late, but I guess it's still something.

funnily enough i feel like the game was balanced around players picking eder as a fighter or atleast a swashbuckler. my current run is almost certainly the first time i ever picked eder as a pure rogue, and between eder as a rogue and my mainchar as a caster with no healing, the sea cave became like the hardest part of the game definitely had to recruit tankier help in port maje.

depending on what they need it for, this might not count. it doesn't grant T3 inspirations, it upgrades existing inspirations, which matters for things like e.g. stacking rules

the sailor experience after 4 ranks doesn't do anything. there is like one sailor that has 5 stars to start with, and they are a rare exception. for everyone else, sailor experience doesn't do anything past 4. there's also "crew experience" and that levels up your sailors for boarding fights.

i'm not following your math here. for a non-troubadour, the ticks of damage from death and dragon aren't attack rolls so don't interrupt. only the initial application from the start of the chant counts for the interrupt. this means every 6s. edit - dah! ninjaed again by boeroer

wasteland 3 was alright. i personally thought the story was pretty dumb, and the mechanics are pretty facile compared to the typical rtwp crpg, but a decent enough way to spend some hours.

I seem to remember that DA:I did a pretty decent job making each area have a distinct feel. I didn’t play a lot of P:K but there it felt like “forest tile set, underground tileset, etc” whereas in DA:I there was more of a sense (at least in the outdoor environments) of a crafted world. But I did say “nearly.” It has a very MMO-y design (lots of mining, open fields full of identical enemies, etc) nothing’s perfect

FWIW, dragon age inquisition very nearly checks off all the crpg boxes for me; it's literally class-based party-based rtwp. so clearly there is some sort of mainstream market for it. (the system is a little simplified compared to games like P:K or deadfire, but maybe that's why it has mainstream appeal, and combos add some tactical depth that P:K and deadfire don't have) whenever the next dragon age comes around, i'll be looking for it and for anyone who's looking and hasn't tried it DA:I can be up your alley. cities: skylines!

- have you just tried using berath's blessing to bump up your level? barring that, my usual route is (sorry i'm missing specific quest names because this is just off the top of my head) - everything on maje island, this gets me to level 5 by the time i arrive on queen's berth and do the ghost puppet show - nekataka: in periki, trigger the fassina gloves quest, arkemyr quest, the degno's satchel quest, get tekehu, enter all the stores to get map xp and trigger fast travel later make your way up to kahanga palace to trigger the next step in the main quest. make sure to talk to prince to get the gullet line of quest. then go to muhai's estate and get muhai. go to sacred stair. complete muhai, advance eder's quest (if using), pick up bounty quests and area quests for later go visit the vailian trading company to get some XP and cash. also: do the luca quest do the quest where you can end up with 4 iron cannons at the end pick up sanza's first exploration quest <-- this gives you boatloads of XP for casual exploration pick up valian bounty quest resolve the first part of the family pride questline (just the duel) resolve the first part of the oathbinder sanctum questline (just to get the mission to go to oathbinder sanctum) get konstanten loot some luminous adra crates from the mill go to brass citadel and talk to the haza nui, you get XP just for doing so. go ahead and talk to atsura to get that poko kohara quest, going downstairs gets you map XP anyway. also: next part of fassina's glove quest visit all the buildings, pick up ship bounty quest go back to periki resolve the fassina quest go to luminous bath house to do the next part of degnos <- if you plan on being aggressive in this quest, don't do this yet, the fight is brutal at this level (which should be ~6) go to the gullet resolve all quests that you can here that does not involve going into the old city (though you can do the first part to get access to old city) you can make the biha-needs-transport quest easier if you don't care about getting all the kids off, or if you trick the goldpact paladin to go downstairs first, so the fight to kill them all is easier. full violence shouldn't be too hard. there'll be some back-and-forth depending, such as going to kapanga palace or sacred stair depending on how you resolve the food shortage, and also to kapanga to get the cornett of waves if you are using pallegina, having gone to sacred stair means you can also do the next part of her companion quest line in gullet (the hole, and then delver's row) the luminous adra crates are used here in the undercroft to resolve a quest, if you take this route for the food shortage leave nekataka - go to the island where you can recruit a xaurip, clear the island (gets you XP for sanza's quest, plus misc bestiary xp) - go to the island with the cannibals near maje island, clear it (gets you XP for sanza's quest, plus misc bestiary xp) - do any easy ship bounties or the early fighting bounties (porokoa and meryl are easy at this stage) - back to nekataka cash in any completed bounties, cash in sanza's - to fort deadlight resolve the benweth quest, advance serafen's (if using). <- might be too early if you plan on taking a violent approach to benweth - to dunnage resolve the drunken pirate quest, get all the bounty quests (incl the firebrand crew or whatever) talk to the principi head post-benweth to advance the questline resolve the play quest <- if you're somehow not level 8 yet, this will be too hard at this stage because of the ambush there might be other minor quests in dunnage that i'm forgetting about. do them - back to fort deadlight (you should've gotten contacted by the other princip leader, aeryn or whatever) you don't get experience for going back, but you get cash for divulging secrets At this point you should be level 8-9 and you didn't do anything particularly hard (unless you tried to duke it out with Degnos's related ambush which IMO is unfairly hard). Depending how I feel, I'd tackle Old City, Oathbinder Sanctum, the "Skipping Ahead" quest, maybe do more island exploration for Sanza for more XP, and then when Family Pride is no longer skulled, I'll tackle that. Eventually the Hanging Sepulchers for both the principi and berathian priest questlines. Eventually Arkemyr's infiltration and then pick up Fassina. Poko Kohara pops onto my todo list around level 10-11, which is also a good time for the next batch of sanza quests

can't speak for the community patch, but backstab should absolutely be working - my current run i used eder as a backstabber for maje island with out any issue - the main difficulty was just staying stealthed long enough to land a hit.

holy crap, does Vs Evil just have like one part-time developer doing this? the game hit end-of-life like two years ago

i personally liked tyranny's thematic starting point and wish it had absolutely no "good" option, because it seems like a bit of a cop-out rather than forcing players to engage with being an instrument of evil. i wish it would have embellished it more and shown more of the banal aspects to it. but the system is pretty blah. for all its faults, sometimes i find myself wanting to go give P:K another attempt. I dont' do that with tyranny. even with greater narrative replayability, if this is the best a classless rtwp has to offer, count me out. it's just very samey, even with wildly different party members. i'm kind of in the same boat as OP. Periodically I go looking around for another great crpg to get into, but it's really kind of a wall. I got Tower of Time off a steam sale, but haven't been motivated enough to start it. Many of the AAA "rpgs" seem rather samey; got Horizon Zero Dawn on PC in the same sale and while it sure has some nice visuals and world-building, the mechanics are the same-ol no-contraints "stealth, combat, craft/foraging/misc" identikit skill trees as every other AAA action rpg. Disco Elysium was a nice bright spot, but for more of an action-bent there doesn't seem to be much out there. I really hope Avowed does something different (I could kill for a class-based action rpg).