thelee

if it helps, there are a couple of "cruel" options that are just more "i'm sometimes a jerk" versus "i'm a sociopath." i don't know if it's enough to get to a high cruel disposition, though. an example is you can be a jerk to queen onekaza for some major cruelty points, and depending on how you've been RP-ing, your response is less like "i'm a candy-stealing jerk" and more like "i'm definitely going to be siding with a different faction than work for you, lady"

you might want to consult the bottom part of my guide for the specific mechanics about how faith & conviction work: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/paladin the tl;dr is that you need to get both your two favored dispositions up to at least three to max it out, you can't get away with just one disposition. neutrals don't help and are essentially just "safe" options for RP purposes. negative dispositions hurt you one for one against positive dispositions, though a total "negative score" isn't as bad as one might think because of how badly the designers messed up inversion math for this. however, unlike poe1 where you could take a talent to reset your negative dispositions, there's no such option in deadfire so you need to be more careful. FYI, i'm not sure if you meant this, but you seem to indicate that it was possible to max out faith and conviction in poe1 with just a single disposition - this is not true. You needed at least 5 total favored disposition scores to do that, and you could only get as high as 4 in any given score. you might be confusing it with the effect of faith and conviction on hired adventurers, which didn't benefit/suffer from disposition at all (but they are affected by disposition in deadfire, so you have to be careful to only hire compatible paladins and priests. this doesn't apply to obsidian-created NPCs). FYI I also have a pillars of eternity 1 guide that goes into this a lot more: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/687020-pillars-of-eternity/faqs/72035 (it's older, so it's in text and you have to do a search for "Faith and Conviction" to find the details) final note - "favored" dispositions doesn't mean "only correct" dispositions. There's no problem for RP purposes in picking a neutral option - your deity or order doesn't mind. They only mind if you pick a disfavored reputation.

slicken and whatever you got for damage. i'm mostly just focusing on solving the "they keep seeming to get away with a merge" problem. iirc hauane is weak to frost - on gigantic form and lower you might be better off using something like freezing pillar to do lots of damage, in an area - also helps for the smaller oozes because there can be a lot of them, they will merge aggressively at 100%, and you want to get rid of them as fast as you can. but keep in mind i don't have alot of experience solo-ing megabosses, all my efforts (except for a tactician/skaen) were party efforts, so i don't know if it will necessarily work out well for you.

have you tried slicken? slicken would be extremely easy to recur with bloodmage, and you can target both gigantic oozes at the same time with each slicken. at gigantic and below, slicken should be fairly reliable at interrupting (it is so on potd, on veteran it should be even more reliable). i would argue slicken is in fact much better at the hauane fight than crushing doom. edit - you could even set up lots of slickens on hauane itself near the end so that when it dies, you already have slicken standing around to start interrupting the oozes. can't do that with crushing doom. edit - also, a slightly flaky strategy is to go off to the top-right side of the map, then when they split, use a summon to keep one gigantic ooze busy and lure hte other to the opposite side (bottom-left) of hte map. if you do it right, when your summon disappears the gigantic ooze will stay on that right side of the map and will just be uninvolved for the rest of the fight (no merge attempt). it's kind of flaky, but i've pulled it off a couple times. might be an idea for a last resort.

iirc, there were always some myths about the gods, tons of them - but no gods actually existed. when the engwithans created the gods, they fulfilled existing archetypes and then went on an inquisition making sure only their archetypes existed as a cohesive religion. not all engwithans died to create the gods. otherwise, there would have been no engwithans left to conduct their inquisition to eliminate other belief systems. however, the mass casualties from creating the gods and the fact that the inquisitors were basically sworn to die in secrecy (i think something is mentioned like this by whats-her-face at the end of poe1) probably meant the civilization collapsed over a short period of time. edit - there's some specific additional lore about glanfathans and ondra crashing a moon into eora and what that meant for the engwithans, but i don't remember all the specifics. the engwithans who arrive on ukaizo are the ones set to build the wheel and create the gods.

no, not always. it was a nerf like in the 2.0 or 3.0 patch range to bring dual-wielded full attacks more in line with at least 2h attacks. (it's almost the exact negative inversion modifier you need to make the expected damage identical between a dual-wielded full attack and an equivalent 2h full attack) dual-wielding has always been a little bit too good; it's still very good, now just a little less so.

yes, this bugged (sic) me quite a bit. i ended up googling it and realizing that that was the result of an extremely trivial quest to resolve. it was not at all obvious to me that that was the trigger for that perma-fatigue. (edit - and a lot of search results suggested that a bunch of other people were confused by it as well)

i feel like if you are only playing with sidekicks, you should invest in a healer or party support mainchar. the only sidekick that fills this role is vatnir, and he comes in real late, like level 12 at the earliest feasible, still gated behind a very-hard-at-level-12 boss fight. edit - when you do get vatnir, it won't even be redundant, because vatnir's subclass gives him a bunch of offensive heft. plus you can never go too wrong with double healing/party support on potd. edit - fassina can be a helpful early companion with healing and support, but i think a conjurer/druid is a suboptimal multiclass.

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*