thelee

it's been pointed out before, and convinced me, that pathfinder (and even for people who didn't play pathfinder, 3e/3.5e is close enough education) is a much bigger IP than poe1. so in that sense, PK being unintuitive or too unbalanced is much less of a hurdle than if deadfire was unintuitive or unbalanced. there are more resources online (and in real life) to get answers, and if you're having trouble, given the popularity of pathfinder you might be more like "oh, it's my problem" whereas if you have trouble with deadfire you might be more like "oh, it's the game's problem"

Congrats!

it sounds like your driver is crashing. some things to try: 1. verify your game files (corrupted file could cause crash like that) 2. update your drivers, if possible (this hardly ever works but is always worth checking) 3. are you overclocking your 1070? that would cause driver crashes if unstable.

what's your system?

i know it's too late for your character now, but i just wanted to clarify that it's not just your might and per that needs balancing, but really a sum of all the different +damage and +accuracy bonuses you expect to have. in other words, for a rogue there's basically no point in investing in might, because sneak attack is such a consistent extra source of +damage% that to maximize your damage output you should put points into perception instead. similarly, a ranger is going to have such a huge accuracy that you're better off putting points into might than more into perception. and as a third example, if you expect to wield medium or large shields all the time, then perception becomes extremely important compared to might, because you're effectively starting off at -4 or -8 compared to might. however, dexterity is the ultimate king damage stat. Both might and perception translate into ~2% net damage increase (it's counterintuitive, but 3% damage increase => 2% actual net damage increase due to grazes and how damage bonuses are additive). Dexterity very nearly translates into 3% net damage increase, and is useful for more than just damage. In basically any build (unless I'm going for a particular character "concept") I always prize dexterity over putting points into might and perception. that large shield modal can be a real life saver. against those damned risen archers, i tend to send out a lone tank first with the large modal switched on shortly after so that they absorb all those killer arrow hits. yeah. I tend to actually really like this angle. I wish the stats were a bit more balanced, but in general I like the ability to create non-cookie-cutter builds. It's a bit ironic that "cookie-cutter" builds in this game are actually a bit suboptimal due to how con and might work, but aside from resolve (which has increasing returns and a single point can make or break a build) the impact of stats are such that "suboptimal" doesn't mean "game-ruining" like it used to IWD or BG (or Fallout 1/2, for a non-IE franchise example).

Bad for people who bought fig shares, I think, though. "break even" is different from "made enough money to trigger a profit off of fig share dividends" which seemed to be based on wildly optimistic numbers. I maintain that the fig shares were borderline a scam, and I put that firmly on Feargus's shoulers.

Found the tweet (sorry sent it to myself from a screenshot on my phone, so no direct link)

definitely debauchery. the hangover effects are ignorable if either use drunkard's regret, or just rest multiple times in one sitting with some non-alcoholic stuff. (this does not work so well in rymrgand or eothas's challenge, at which point iron stomach might be worth it)

where did this news come from? if true, i'm glad they at least broke even, because i was worried the sales were so low it contributed to some insolvency threat that made them sell to microsoft. (it could still have, but at least it's not as bad as i feared) i sadly believe that there's not much to be done. i suspect there's no "mainstream" IE-style genre and what we saw was just a happy fad in the 90s and a brief recurrence over the past few years. PoE1 benefited a lot from nostalgia and bandwagon-interest. That nostalgia well has dried up, and it's strikingly difficult (possibly impossible) to bridge the gap between 90s-era RTwP mechanics and the types of games newer, younger (more profitably big) audiences like. i've heard other games have also hit hurdles with declining sales in successive attempts. that being said, a studio can be "smart" about it. I think a contributing factor is that Deadfire wasn't "smart" about it - so we had full VO and ship-to-ship combat and blew up the budget and it made it all the more critical to have big sales, which then didn't materialize. Disco Elysium was a critical hit and fan favorite... for a small, core group of fans. But it was also much "smarter" about it - no full VO, streamlined mechanics, nothing extraneous. but the ship has sailed for deadfire. Don't chase good money after bad - also known as the sunk-cost fallacy. Most of a game's sales comes soon after release, and I don't think there's anything that can be done to boost sales significantly, and I don't think there's any sort of cost-benefit math that works out in favor of them doing it. We got turn-based mode, but from what it sounded like it was someone's spare-time project that they decided to just put in a few staff members to help get it over the finish line. I hope the extra interest in Deadfire covered the SWE-hours invested in it, but I think it clearly showed how barebones of an effort it was because the game stability broke irrevocably from having done it. (I will always be a bit bitter about it, even if 5.0 is still rather stable compared to 4.0... it's still a regression from earlier versions).

i mean at a certain point aruihi has you go talk to onekaza and i wondered if there was some conflict between resolving a quest and his desire to see you up to onekaza. you've already talked to her? have you already decided whether or not to side with her or others? i'm just wondering if you're far enough into the game you've closed off some options in a buggy way. either way, you may be S.O.L. sadly.

i don't have too much experience with a crusader, but I would personally max out resolve and get as much dexterity as I can, and then mostly rely on small shields versus the others. you would really lean into the tankiness of it all, and due to increasing returns of deflection, max resolve + paladin deep faith (and good role playing) + shield style + small shield would get you huge survivability returns. Small shields don't tank your accuracy, so you don't need perception as desperately. And the small shield modal boosts your weapon accuracy by +15, which can help offset your lower offensive output and the 25% recovery penalty for switching on the modal. There also a couple of small shields that you can dual wield for damage (tuolito's palm--even if it's monk focused, you can also pick up monastic unarmed training and give it a similar boost--or the best defense) and dual-wielding speedy responsiveness. (also helps with damage output if you have mob stance on) later on, weyc's oracular focus can make you very tough with either permanent +5 or temporary +10 deflection boost, combined with refreshing defense from the fighter. your points are scattered and limited, so I would reserve most other points for dexterity. Compared to might and perception it gives you all-around superior returns, and also helps compensate for the sluggishness of being a tank. I would actually eat a point or two out of constitution - early on you can use an amulet of health, and later on if you're still struggling you can pick up Tough. But IME your high defenses and paladin skills will do more for you than more points in constitution. You can use those points from constitution to put into dexterity or intellect. I wouldn't take points out of might or perception if I could help it, but at the same time I would only put points into it if I had already maxed out resolve and I was comfortable with where my dexterity and intellect were sitting at.

some very few spells and effects get weirdly boosted benefits from PL scaling. Theoretically, you're only supposed to get +2 acc per PL if there's nothing else on the spell to boost (repulsing seal, slicken). I don't know why storm of holy fire would get that either. Do the projectiles get other forms of scaling? (I know that meteor swarm from a scroll really sucks because the actual projectiles themselves don't get any PL scaling to damage or PEN). historically, some spells would get more or less PL scaling based on designer discretion. Most of that differentiation got wiped out in one of hte patches, but some differences still remain, either by accident or by intention. (Carnage gets +10% damage per PL, for example. One of the chanter invocations--I forget which--gets +2 acc per PL as well. May be intentional or maybe they forgot to fix it in their PL scaling fix.) I wonder if Storm of Holy Fire is an accident like that.

ok, after testing more forms of invisibility, i think shadowing beyond is just the weird one. even potion of invisibility is fairly generous. i actually think now that it's a bug with shadowing beyond, since i noticed that upon action you lose invisibility, but you still keep a "shadowing beyond" buff up until the moment your spell actually lands. i think it should either be vice versa, or both should wait until your spell actually lands. updating my original post. i can't reproduce the smoke veil issue consistently enough, that i'm chalking it up to random noise from my test fight that's causing something to happen.

you are right. going through my notes, i was a bit sloppy with the testing. i did some test with both smoke veil and shadowing beyond on what i thought were "instant" spells and got similarly bad results, that i gave up on using smoke veil and did the rest of my tests with shadowing beyond. it's worse/more confusing than that, i'm afraid. smoke veil -- it turns out -- also waits until you affect a target, but is less generous than stealth. so it's not that it lasts a bit longer than shadowing beyond, but it will wait until you affect something before it breaks. so how far or close that fireball is, doesn't actually matter. however, like i said, it's less generous than stealth: stealth doesn't break upon using potions or poisons. smoke veil does. bafflingly, even though smoke veil will wait until you affect an enemy before breaking invisibility, you still don't get assassinate bonus on some spells depending on some weirdness internally, even if you would with stealth. this confused my testing. (an example spell: divine mark will only get +25 accuracy from stealth. from smoke veil or shadowing beyond, it gets no assassinate bonus) edit - this is inconsistent. sometimes i get the assassinate bonus, sometimes i don't. edit 2 - smoke vile doesn't break from your hazards affecting enemies. stealth does. gaaaaah why didn't obsidian pick on one single implementation of invisibility. sorry. a lot of people when it comes to game mechanics like to say stuff based on intuition, without having actually verified it in-game. it's a pet peeve of mine ("theorycrafting"). accept my apologies. on the other hand, between the two of us, you were able to help identify how invisibiliy/assassinate is even weirder than i thought. at least though now this means smoke veil is a better way to trigger it.

you should test this yourself. for most forms of invisibiliy (including smoke veil), you become visible as soon as you do an action. e.g. as soon as a projectile appears at your finger tips. it's already way too late to get an assassinate bonus from that. actual stealth is more generous, because it doesn't unstealth you until you actually affect a target, so you get an assassinate bonus as a result. edit - keep in mind that i was testing even with spells that don't have projectiles. the timing pretty much has to be instant, which means it boils down to some incredible tedious details of how a spell animation and its timing is set up.

Just discovered this while I was trying to suss out some ambiguities for a prospective assassin build. Two critical insights - 1. the game dynamically updates your PEN and other stats for calculating spell effects as they change. this might seem obvious, but some of the ramifications of this were unobvious to me even until now. for one, this means that boosting your PEN or getting hit with Dazed can cause DoTs that you've already applied to enemies to change their damage. The game doesn't "snapshot" your stats upon casting, in other words. (I had previously thought that maybe PEN was snapshotted) 2. assassinate is a passive bonus that lasts only so long as you are physically invisible. Importantly, stealth and many forms of invisibility disagree on when your character should become visible. This can really mess up how you plan on using your spells with an assassin. This means: while stealth or invisible, an assassin/caster multiclass will appropriately see boosted accuracy and PEN for all their spells and tooltips, because you have an assassinate bonus and the game is updating you with what you have. however, for slower spell effects, you may already be visible by the time they happen, which means you are missing out on the full potential of assassinate. for example: if you apply a DoT, you lose the +PEN assassinate bonus because by the time the spell actually does damage (even the intial tick), you're already visible. This is true regardless of whether you are stealthed or invisible. For DoT or slower spell effects, the only way to benefit from +PEN is to become reinvisible after you've already cast the spell (and then that implies you pretty much just sit around doing nothing while giving you a slight penetration bonus). the rest i hid in a spoiler tag because it turned out from follow-up posts that it's mostly an issue with shadowing beyond, but i'm keeping it around so anyone who goes through this thread knows what on earth the next few posts are talking about. TL;DR: don't use DoTs, bounce, jump, or multi-part spells with assassinate don't use shadowing beyond to trigger assassinate, unless it's a weapon-based attack. smoke veil and potions of invisibility are your friend. inexplicably, hazard spells don't break stealth/invis, and (excluding shadowing beyond) even when they trigger they don't break invisibility, even though stealth would normally break. this has the odd consequence that a priest with good alchemy could drink a potion of invisibility and go to town just casting repulsing, warding, and searing seals, and all of them get a +25 accuracy bonus. then you finish it up with one good spell to break invisibility. not exactly the most powerful thing you could do with your time, but fun nonetheless. works less well with druid/wizard because the only hazards they get are walls that don't do too much per tick. (the really good stuff--like wall of many colors--aren't hazards) note; edited this post based on updated dat from follow up comments.

i mean, this is my point. blade cascade has a 5% chance to proc, and you need to build up that lash buff. You also need to spend 3-ish salvations of time, which costs an empower point as well. you can also end most fights in less time and setup with a single empowered symbol. SoT certainly can be metagamed to be powerful (and can become degenerate), but let's anchor that a bit.

by default you only get +20s, +30s with self empower from one priest. (maybe +40s with some luck with echo effects). without brilliant, that might sound like a lot, but it's not. sure you can blade cascade your way through a trash mob, but an empowered high-level symbol will also do the same thing. even if you combine with other effects at the same time (e.g. BDD, Escape, aefyllath, wecy's hood, blade turning) to get extra mileage out of the stretched duration, you are certainly very powerful, but not--imo--that much out of line for multiple casts and an empower point of a mid-high level spell with lots of metagame setup. salvation of time is a very swing-y spell. it can certainly be powerful when metagamed, but it can also be utterly useless if not set up correctly. but it's not truly degenerate unless you can brilliant your way to stretching short effects to infinite duration.

fyi, minoletta's minor missiles strikes unerringly (no attack roll). ninagauth's killing bolt attacks fortitude - which is your lowest defense. no amount of deflection protects you against either. i believe killing bolt does raw damage, so no amount of armor will protect you against that, either. i'm guessing you're an inquisitor (trickster). invisibility can be a good way to get spells to whiff, though i don't know what specific build you may be referencing.

It's inversions. Basically - virtually anything in the game with a negative symbol in front of it gets "inverted" and is much stronger than positive values. A full, ugly dissection is here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/inversions For your case, a -35% modifier from dual-wielding is equivalent to a -53.8% additive penalty (1/(1-.35)). Combine that with the other positive additive modifiers, and do any appropriute re-inversions and you end up doing 13.11-ish damage (rounded to 13.1). Inversions are basically the worst part of deadfire's mechanics in terms of ease of use and intuitiveness. edit2: the math is ugly. at this point I've done it enough that a few negative modifers I know exactly how to invert them off the top of my head. But for an approximation, you can say that a single negative modifier is roughly equivalent to it being a single multiplicative penalty, if you want to be able to do calculations yourself. (there are no convenient rules of thumbs for multiple negative modifiers and/or when combined with lots of positive modifiers) edit: when I say "virtually anything" I really do mean anything. Healing modifiers, area of effect modifiers, beneficia/hostile effect durations, health penalties from low con, even paladin and priest disposition scaling. There are many places in the game where you can tell that the designers themselves didn't quite grasp their own inversion system and the balancing is a little screwy.

it definitely was related to containers and items. the same game i had would get progressively worse the further i got in poe1. act i - fast area loads and saves. by white march - ages to load and save. you can even verify by looking at save game file sizes. for deadfire they are all relatively compact - in poe1 they would balloon (istr to hundreds of MBs). iirc it was because there was no culling of inventories anywhere, and they were stored really inefficiently, so the more you looted, your save file sizes and load times would grow basically without bound. deadfire apepars to handle this much better by a) having vendors reset their inventory and even ignoring that, with a gigantic stash deadfire still doesn't have the same problem.

weird! is it an older thread? i know there used to be issues where effects could instantly annihilate hauane o whe and prevent the split, and i thought they had patched them all. if not, i had assumed all annihilation effects were identical, but i guess that's never a safe assumption with deadfire.

but ooze still splits despite annihilation?

sounds like a bug, unfortunately. you don't have any mods? you're not at a point of talking to queen onekaza? just trying to think of anything that might be conflicting with the quest resolution.

adding on, most mythic stuff is pretty much limited to post-megaboss equipment upgrades (aside from the special berath's blessing, the only source of mythic upgrades is in fact from one of each of the four megabosses). mythic is so utterly unnecessary that by the time you can upgrade a good portion of your stuff to mythic, the game is already over. mythic is more of a trophy than anything else. marux amanth is also stuck at superb, but it's still worth using, particularly for a priest. most of what makes the soulbound items good are their extra abilities - so the fact that some of them may get stuck at superb is less relevant compared to the abilities they gave you.