thelee

1. for actual bugs and not just gameplay shortcomings, just in my short playtime so far: i'm playing an archaeologist. sometimes my archaeologist's luck won't activate in combat when i press it, no matter what i do. sometimes eventually it'll activate as part of a separate action, sometimes i'll finish an entire fight without it activating ever. a couple times i've literally completely despawned when resting in oleg's tavern (had to reload) i've literally been unable to leave an area - the exit marker is not receiving my clicks (a save/reload fixed it) crossing the bridge (i forget the specific area name) starts off so zoomed in that i can't see what the hell i'm doing, but i can sure as hell count the number of bricks on the path respeccing one's character has portrait issues changing keyboard hotkeys only inconsistently updates tooltips throughout the game i think it's worse that this game has been out for years and still receives patches and yet in my short playtime i've already hit these bugs. if it weren't for deadfire's consumables regression, i would put deadfire as unquestionably more stable, now it's just "generally" more stable. i truly don't get the people who complain about deadfire's bugginess but are fine with P:K. 2. i think it's unintentionally bad. some of it may be translation errors because i assume this was not an english-first setup. but, most of the npcs seem thinly one dimensional (e.g. amiri like you say), and the "romance" options that have opened up are comical - like with octavia i have 5/6 five-word dialogue options asking about her time as a slave and trauma in childhood, and 1/6 of them is a multi-sentence over-the-top flirty option. ok sure, bud. i feel like only an awkward male could have written "romance" dialogue this clunky. where is avellone's influence here? maybe whatever good stuff there is is his contribution.

i think this is debatable. helwalker is brutally metagame-able. i'd probably pick that over nazpalca. monk is versatile enough that even xoti's subclass looks top-tier in the right set up (aforementioned whispers of the wind set up => high and neverending wound generation as you clear out a fight singlehandedly)

i think you can theoretically just go on a killing spree in the VTC building and get it there? but yeah, that definitely reads like someone just going through items on a wiki page without consideration of feasibility or effectiveness. edit - tuolito's palm is only useful for a more tanky appproach - equipping it and also dumping res seems nonsensical to me for a "best build." regardless of hte upgrades and the fist scaling on the palm, base fists do comically more dps. the real "best build" is any build that gets ajamuut's stalking cloak and spams whispers of the wind

i think there's some minor bugginess because the game assumes some knowledge about the main quest i think in some quest updates. i think something similar happened in poe1 where companions might mention thaos or woedica before you even knew what was going on. but you definitely should not know more about eothas's ultimate plans yet, just where he's trying to go and the immediate effects of his actions. there are also some dialogues that are triggered by rest (xoti in particular, since she needs to have nightmares) - but it should be pretty early on, so unless you've been abstaining from all rest, it seems suspect. edit - just noticed that you mentioned you rested for hte first time, so yeah, you're going to get hit with a lot of dialogue. you should rest more, if only because it means you should be using empower more and getting rest bonuses.

egad, remember Fallout: Tactics and Brotherhood of Steel? thank god Interplay went under. I hope Avowed is not to Pilllars as Brotherhood of Steel was to Fallout...

I've been playing P:K and while I am obviously colored by enjoying Deadfire a lot (top CRPG imo), I think it really just boils down to intellectual property mindshare. As objectively as I can be, P:K is a pretty janky game (a lot if it just pathfinder being based on a decades-old d20 system, but it also does some janky implementation of the tabletop mechanics, notably flanking and to a lesser degree combat maneuvers), even now it is still pretty buggy (buggier than Deadfire), and the characters and writing is nothing to get excited about. The stronghold system is pretty good (easily the best I've seen in an RPG) and the way it's interleaved with the story is pretty well done. But when all is said and done, given how mediocre much of the game is to me, it is a very acceptable adaptation of pathfinder and as such is worth playing just on that merit. The stronghold is fun, but I'm also playing forward just to get to see the high-level pathfinder-y content. Given how much of a mindshare 3e/3.5e and consequently pathfinder has, I don't think it's that surprising that P:K outsold Deadfire - however much I enjoy pillars's world, Pathfinder is huge and P:K is the main video game to play using Pathfinder rules. That being said, Obsidian doesn't have to pay licensing fees to implement Pillars rules. I don't know how much licensing runs, but a smaller game than P:K is fine if you can still make money, so in this context comparing P:K to Deadfire doesn't make as much sense, and the question is more like "why was P:K more profitable [i'm assuming] than Deadfire" versus just in terms of sales. (By the way... P:K doesn't have full VO... *cough cough*.) edit: it would be an interesting exercise for OBS to test the waters with a pathfinder crpg themselves - i don't think owlcat has an exclusive license.

porque no los dos, though? for characters who really prize PL, both are great, which is sorta the point. and stone of power is extremely good if you exploit the trick to get infinite charges of it. if the nature godlike's +1 PL was, say, an active bonus that didn't stack, it'd be much more mediocre. You're basically trading a headgear slot for Prestige, which a tier 9 talent. (and you can still get Prestige) (perhaps it's worth mentioning that moon godlikes effectively get something similar because their pallegina quest reward gives them +1 PL at night, which I would totally pick over a lot of necklaces, including stone of power given that i don't like to exploit that) i missed the part where the bonus gets more significant the more health you get - i think that might be better; though i think 20% is a better upper bound, because i feel like a typical early heal would be 10% bonus, which is subtle enough that it feels a bit more OK while still being something, and it withers away below that.

i think that's probably ok. reflectin on nature godlike, if you really feel like buffing it up a bit i think a smaller heal bonus. i do frankly think that +1 PL for a headslot is more than enough of a tradeoff, because a stackable unconditional +1 PL is just such a hard benefit to replicate. from a symmetry perspective giving the nature godlike something like the others makes sense but it really shouldn't be that significant. a nature godlike is a build-around race in a way very few other races are like.

predator's sense is a great pick, i would combine with deep wounds on rogue so you basically have 100% uptime on having a DoT for your ghost to decimate foes with. vicious is also a good pick. and you're right, you don't need to worry about survivability for your pet. you could be a caster-slaying machine - start attacking a wizard/priest/druid in the back (using concussive tranquilizer to wipe out any buffs and interrupting any awful spells) and send in your ghost wolf as a dive bomb attack to attack them at +2 PEN/+65% damage

concussive damage does less damage (far less, if you are dual-wielding ranged weapons). however, the damage on wounding shot tends to be so low that i would generally much rather spend the 1 bond interrupting someone (and stripping them of any buffs) than doing like a few bits of extra damage. (iirc wounding shot is an applyovertime effect, which means instead of doing 20% per tick--which might be competent--it does a fraction of that, more like 10% per tick)

disintegration is raw damage so you don't have to worry about it at all. i would suggest only getting penetrating visions if you have more than a couple (non-raw) damaging powers. cipher also tends to have higher PEN on their spells so they are a little less negatively impacted by AR.

i highly recommend picking up some higher level cipher powers. between conqueror stance and disciplined barrage, your accuracy is going to be so decent that disintegration might be an extremely awesome pick, even on higher difficulties with no morningstar support. weapon mastery is also such an extremely small bump in damage, that i might recommend picking something else, from either fighter or cipher. i've only really ever picked weapon mastery as a single-class fighter when i've exhausted all the better picks. as an extremely late-game weapon pick, might want to take a look at sanguine great sword (i forget its specific name). you have disciplined barrage for extra crit chance and it'll give you lots of sustain as a result. i've never given it a shot before my most recent run (as a weapon it's totally out of the way and unobvious) but even on an utterly unoptimized build it was not bad. (and if memory serves, i think i was suprised by thisty blade or parched blade weapon upgrade helping spells as well, someone might want to double-check)

IMO wounding shot is a bit of a trap pick. The total damage is so low that i'd much rather pick something else and use that for the 1 bond, like concussive tranquilizier (which you get). have you considered some pet talents (even though you're ghost heart you can make your pet rather annoying to enemies and helpful to you).

that seems really low early on and having a separate scaling mechanism than PL seems odd. one suggestion is to make it scale starting at bloodied, a lot like finishing blow. you can afford to have a larger "final" bonus because on average the bonus will still be relatively small, but it also feels more relevant because near death is such a narrow window typically. this means all the time and not just bloodied? coupled with the other stuff, seems a little... too good.

the aldris blade doesn't come that late - ashen maw. i suppose it depends on how you run content. i tend to do most of the story content (hasongo and ashen maw) in one go around level 12-15. that still leaves more faction quests, high-level areas, and all the DLC, so it seems more mid-game to me. that being said, i don't think these are necessarily "build-arounds" (with the exception of blade cascade), just weapons to look forward to. with the exception of blade cascade, they won't really make or break a build.

I think here assassinate is a beneficiary of some of the mechanics of turn-based. i know that eld nary with a bellower is pretty much THE optimal bellower build in turn-based, where it's much less good in real time. i wonder if turn-based makes the assassinate bonus or invisibility last long enough to benefit something like a fireball?

what a never-ending source of confusion *cries*

lololol i was rereading my post and something about the eder reference didn't sit quite right but i couldn't put my finger on it. i think the benefit for shields is that they don't have to be all or nothing - medium and large shields have modals that can give you huge survivability returns without necessarily needing to go all in on deflection. even on my characters that don't stack deflection i sometimes use med/large just for those. small shields are a lot iffier. (i tend ot mostly use them on ranged casters with firearms so that they have slightly better chacne of shrugging off ranged attacks)

i disagree - depending on how one builds, one does not need illusion at all. both the +AR and +deflection class of spells suffer from a relatively similar problem in that they can be close to worthless or very valuable, all depending on your character (both are pretty sensitive to difficulty setting as well). my eder focused pretty exclusively on spirit shield, ironskin, bulwark, and llengrath's as well as spell reflection as defenses and it worked very well, but i also had heavy armor. his dps was pretty ok, but it was not based on weapons (spells), but OP seems less concerned with a super-optimal build. i do agree that depending on what OP is going for, trickster + fighter is a very compelling option. imo that's one the better ways to get a (non-summoned) weapons-focused caster.

scordeo's edge is very good but these days i avoid using it or upgrade it suboptimally because the temptation to exploit blade cascade is too great, that's how good it is. even without blade cascade, the increasing accuracy boost is crazy, which for you would probably be adaptive for generic +20 accuracy when maxed out. you can't go wrong with it. tarn's is actually probably better overall than grave calling outside of metagaming and vessel fights - you don't have to ramp up your lash (which can take a while if dual-wielding with another weapon) so while grave calling maxes out higher, tarn's starts off higher which means grave calling spends a lot of time initially just catching up. it also has bonus PEN, which is always nice. i also really like aldris blade of crow or whatever. it has a really great on-crit effect and the +10 shock damage is affected by other damage modifiers. it has also a subtle syenrgy if you pair with tarn's and its upgrade to reduce target deflection, making crits more common. (though if you're going with this synergy alone, scordeo's adaptive upgarde is better) if you've done the valian quest line there's also animancer's energy blade, which is great for tough fights because of its speed and its ability to completely ignore AR. (it does lower damage, but it also has only a 3s recoveyr instead of a 4s recovery) this was good enough that i mained it for one of my glass cannon builds against megabosses. edit: with eder, you probably have lots of primary attacks instead of full attacks - is tha tright? if so, you might just want one weapon and then a blunderbuss. that way you could max out on one weapon at the cost of having worse full attacks. (this also has fun synergies with the clear out family of abilities)

if i were to be honest with myself, i think the games that got consumables closest to "right" is something like final fantasy tactics. there the game, as you say, is pretty much balanced around the expectation of using potions and phoenix downs and throwing bombs or some such - if not that, then the spell equivalents from a white mage or black mage. there's also a pronounced lack of scarcity - even if you can only afford like 10 potions going into one fight, you can be assured that you'll be able to buy more at the next town after the fight. there's also katana, which one of the classes can use as a consumable - everytime you use a katana there's a 15% chance or so it breaks, but you can buy more katanas. There's also unique katanas with powerful effects, and I guarantee you most people who ever played a samurai in FFT hardly ever used those unique katanas for their abilities even for "only" a 15% chance of losing it, for the same reason that it's frequently a struggle to use a basic potion in a party-based RPG like deadfire; you never know if there's a harder fight just around the corner you *really* should save it for. the reason why i say "if i were to be honest with myself" is because it's far from my ideal world where you'd have consumables that are (1) interesting [in deadfire you get unique effects with potions of impediment or invisibility or ascendance, and in poe1 you got some unique spell scrolls], (2) with the expectation that you could really get a leg up on a fight with them (instead of them just being part of the standard expectation in every fight like in FFT or Diablo 1/2/3), but also (3) don't induce anxiety to use every single time. it really seems like no one has really figured out a way to get all three.

minor correction - the initial DoT landing does, but DoT ticks do not break most invisibility. They do break stealth (though i'm not sure how you would be stealthed in a legitimate scenario where you managed to land a DoT) and they break shadowing beyond/enduring shadows, but not any of the other invisibilities. keeping in mind DoTs are different from things like wall of fire or venombloom. edit: after the last discussion on invisibility mechanics on the forums, i updated my section on the guide to be as comprehensive and accurate as possible. i'm pretty sure it's accurate, and honestly for myself it's hard to keep a handle on all the various oddities about invisibility and stealth without referring to it: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/invisibility-vs-stealth

it's not your fault, it really is a game design trap. someday someone will design a game system where using consumables doesn't trigger people's instinctual hoarding instinct. i got used to using up consumables in poe/deadfire, i just started pathfinder: kingmaker and i'm falling into the (not-using-) consumable trap all over again. some instincts die hard, i guess

i think adra ban (and a few other mats) are not on any vendor loot tables, so you can never buy them. maybe that's a bug or something, because i can't believe that the same materials you use to upgrade most things to legendary are also an element for some medium-high level potions and scrolls... they really ought to warn you when you craft a scroll of revive the fallen or potion of improved arcane reflection "WARNING are you sure you want to use 1/2 or 1/4 of one of like four-five legendary upgrades on this not even that powerful one-use item???" edit - some items don't use adra ban to go up to legendary but use sapphires or emeralds or rubies; these are also not on vendor loot tables iirc, but they are so common from drops and loots that it's not too much of a concern (i've even used them to craft scrolls and bombs without feeling like i'm running out). given how *many* more legendary upgrades require adra ban, it really does seem like something got missed in some loot balancing.

with a bloodmage/streetfighter i highly absolutely recommend prioritizing int over con and dex. if you plan on using citzal's or other summoned weapons, you definitely want them to last a while, and int will also control the area effect of citzal. absolutely. i have played far more dangerous glass cannons with good success. you will want to make sure you have good support from your party because a streetfighter in particular can be knocked out really quickly if you're not paying attention. i suspect you're mostly focusing on using blood sacrifice to get to bloodied, and in case you are, keep in mind that a blood mage can also trivially trigger "heating up" by using chill fog and standing in it. the way inversions work, the speed bonus of heating up will be much more powerful than the combined recovery and accuracy penalty of being blinded, so while it's not quite as good as just "heating up" from being distracted or bloodied, it's a pretty foolproof way of doing so. at the very least, concelhaut's staff at tier 1 combined with something like chill fog is a pretty safe, good option to deal damage: with reach you're not next to anyone dangerous (depending on how you aimed your chill fog) and you regenerate a small amount of health with each hit.