thelee

I don't know about where you live, but if I and four of my friends stood around in place for days in front of (or in) a store, periodically looking in to see if the inventory changed, we would probably get the authorities called on us

ah yeah, i don't know anything about modding deadfire, so i assumed there was just a simple "timeout" parameter somewhere on the abilities, since they come so regularly in that fight. too bad if not.

Making the battle shorter, does also make it "easier" without trivializing it because it becomes less tedious. This is why I'm going to go back and suggest reducing defenses (AR mostly, but you can also reduce other defenses) more so than reducing HP. The net effect is similar (Dorudugan dies faster), but the "psychological" effect is that more party builds and character setups will be capable of doing a not-frustratingly-low amount of damage with a not-frustratingly-low hit rate. (Maybe for the rare person who plays megabosses on normal difficulty, you can also provide a small HP nerf as well.) Dorudugan is the megaboss that reminds me most of the classic WoW raid bosses of old, and not in a good way. A huge HP sink and a very minor technical dimension that once you can get down you do ad nauseum with little challenge (in fact, Dorudugan reminds me a lot of a boss like Thaddius in WoW--pay attention to some icon or visual effect on your screen, and then run to a specific location). I'm not sure what you get from having the player do this over 30-45 minutes instead of, say, 20 minutes. My separate (and slightly related) suggestion of making the special fire attacks and vacuum attack more frequent (in concert with making Dorudugan killable in a fraction of the normal time) is based on the idea that the battle would be much shorter and thus more viable for various parties, but also much more "intense" whereas right now you have fire attacks spread out with a long series of melee attacks which--by necessity by the length of the fight--you have to metagame into being trivialized, which not only limits party viability but also means once you have metagamed it properly it's just a long tedious sequence that is relatively uninteresting.

I personally wish in inns and such you were allowed to bring your own food and drink (maybe paying a corkage fee), because especially later in the game I might have food or drink bonuses that I prefer to what's nearby (especially in SSS) but it's a little annoying to leave the area each time I want to rest. This matters extra on Rymrgand's challenge because sometimes the travel time to outside (e.g. Nekataka) might cause food to decay. Also it's a little odd that you can't rest in a lot of cities, but you can wait in place for endless amounts of hours. Clearly the rest restriction harkens back to the Baldur's Gate days, but back then you also couldn't wait in place. RPG logic... (other RPGs are also violators of this logic)

lower resolve doesn't seem like it would matter. dorudugan just has an enormous amount of health, that basically nothing matters except just damage or resource regen simply because the fight is so damn long. and wow, i was going off the wiki which put dorudugan's health at ~6k (~7.4k on potd). no wonder my 200+ stacks of resonance didn't do much on my last attempt... way for the wiki to be off by an order of magnitude. this is my general opinion on dorudugan. I've never heard Titan Souls, but it sounds about right. The hardest part (and the "trick") of dorudugan is just being able to position your characters appropriately to avoid the fireballs and the ground explosions, and to gear up appropriately to survive the vacuum/fire explosion attack at <bloodied. the fact that dorudugan has so much health just makes it tedious, when most players have already demonstrated that they know how to survive the fight after a few of each attack. maybe dorudugan should have like half the health and slightly lower defenses, but use their abilities more often. players would still need to handle the main "tricks" of the fight, but they wouldn't have to do it over a huuuuugely long play session. with lower health and slightly lower defenses, maybe some buffs and debuffs would actually be useful without needing brilliant backup. edit: as far as the other megabosses go, i dont' think they need much tweaking. my last attempt was slightly more optimized (using a monk and a beckoner) and i could clear hauane, sigilmaster, and belranga rather quickly (wotw with ajumaat's stalking cloak is stupid against hauane). however, even being more optimized for megaboss content, there's just no getting aroudn the fact that i have to set aside like half an hour to an hour just to tackle dorudugan, even though the basic trick of the fight is muscle memory at this point.

@n00biwan that is a rough call my dude, sorry to hear about that. it's especially rough because it's not like you were trying to do some lame cheese that bugs out 10% of the time, it looks like just a relatively non-deterministic outcome of a fairly normal world encounter.

for the wand, without any other source, i think the expectation is that the very weak on-hit chance to confuse the enemy is your source for intellect afflictions. really lame, i know. there's also a poison you can make that confuses the enemy, but i'm honestly scratching my head for a good alternate source if you're not wael, a wizard, a cipher, a chanter, or even a druid facing beasts for robe of weyc upgrade, you have to actuially empower an ability. you can't self-empower. but other than that, it's pretty straightforward.

As for maintaining challenge, you could always reduce the delay before the fireballs and the ground explosions go off.

I don't think you should do this. Any single target that can be interrupted is trivially dealt with. The other megabosses have other mechanics that make their interruptibility not debilitating (e.g., auranic has uninterruptible final attacks and a death shield before she releases all the sigils, making it basically required that you deal with all the sigils first; belranga has all the spiders and really high defenses at first; hauane o whe splits and merges so you should be able to interrupt as part of the fight). I think less HP and defenses are fine. If you can survive each of a few of Dorudugan's attacks, then its massive health is mostly just tedious. Alternatively, keep the health but lower defenses, so that more weapon types and approaches are viable at doing any reasonable amount of damage. Idea: lower its engagement limit or give it no engagement. More parties become capable of maneuvering around the attacks without being demolished by disengagement.

@Elric Galad excellent find and explanation!

one thing that hasn't been explicitly mentioned yet is that part of the reason why this is not going to work so well is that barbarians have an inherent -5 deflection penalty (starting them off lower than everyone else) and you are heavily incentivized to take frenzy (further -10 deflection while active) and dual or 2h-wield (no shield bonus). so you are not only going to get hit a lot more, you are also going to get crit a lot more. barbarians really need to rely on armor rating and sheer health for survivability. (and on potd+upscaling, it's extremely hard to win the armor arms/penetration arms race against enemies until mid-late game so you really need to rely on things like Dazed to help out) if you had like a barb/trickster or barb/wael or barb/wizard you might be able to get enough deflection to cancel out all those penalties and make offensive parry worth it, but I think it would honestly be suboptimal. mind plague is very good - ciphers can make their powers pretty accurate (don't remember off the top of my head if it's available to MCs), and the bouncing effect of mind plauge--even if slow--means you can end up hitting enemies far away from the barbarian/cipher in one cast, whereas with e.g. interdiction or arkemyr's dazzlign lights you are extremely limited in whom you can affect.

I mean, the x-factor in this discussion that people need to keep in mind is that Tyranny sold better than Deadfire, despite being a completely original IP with limited commonalities, mechanically, with either D&D or PoE. "Mild disappointment" with various aspects of PoE doesn't seem to explain how Tyranny did way better than Deadfire. It would have to be people actively avoiding the poe name at that point. I'm still partial to the "nostalgia well drying up, very hard to bridge nostalgia with a new audience" angle. It would explain successively declining sales. P:K seems to benefit from a much-better-known IP. Other possible factors - Deadfire setting/pirate theme, P:K leaned even harder into nostalgia (not even bothering to try to update for modern audiences, not that they have as much flexibility to do so), and terrible marketing. (I still see youtube comments on various videos about people who didn't even know Deadfire existed and loved PoE1). Maybe a P:K approach of just leaning harder into the nostalgia may have worked, but I think it would've put a finite cap on sales especially with an original IP; plus I think with an original IP trying to really ape an old system/world Deadfire would've been rather mediocre. (But then again, I love a game that barely broke even, so what does my opinion matter?) edit - though I've mentioned before that I think that PoE1 had a much more frenetic yet obtuse system and a slower crawl in terms of story and exploration. I've tried to advise people interested in the series to skip PoE1 altogether and just leap into Deadfire because I really think it is a much punchier, overall better designed system and narrative. I've definitely had at least one friend start on PoE1 regardless of that and then get meh-ed out of it.

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.