thelee

easiest way is to be a nature godlike and use swift strikes to get a body inspiration for +1 PL. this would be enough to get you to better-than-legendary as multiclass. You'd need a further +2 PL to get to better-than-legendary. easiest is probably potion of ascension, which is +2 PL for the entire fight. other way is to eat some food that gives you +1 PL and then use a Stone of Power to get +2 total PL (+1 from food, stacks with +1 from necklace) for the fight. IIRC there will only ever be one chant of any kind active. I think the most that happens is that if the chant that is already on someone has a shorter duration than the new chant, the duration gets refreshed, but that's it. (most chants don't do much if they could stack anyway) That being said, most (all?) offensive chants need to roll against enemy defense to check, so it might be worth doubling-up on a single chant if you really need a chant to land (I do this with Thick Thick Grew Their Tongues, because when I need to get rid of enemy concentration, I need to do it urgently, so even if it doesn't stack, it gives me multiple attempts at wiping out enemy concentration). the only exception is "Many Lives Pass By, Each Leaving Footprints" which creates summons instead of buffs/debuffs. There you could have a party of five chanters summoning skeletons all the live long day. Not sure it'd be effective (the summoned skeletons from this chant don't scale with your level) but it sure would be silly

The subtle reality is that it's not truly a lie; the inner workings is that the chant has a 10 second duration, but is overridden by the chant/linger mechanics. This matters for exactly one case that I can think of: the "Many Lives Pass By, Each Leaving Footprints" chant. That chant summons a skeleton, but because it's a summon, can't be affected by the chant/linger override. There it actually does have a summon duration of 10s that is extended by intellect as one would expect. Even with Brisk Recitation on, it doesn't shorten the summon duration (which means troubadours can create a frankly stupid amount of trash summons).

truth be told, there's not really that much of a point having a lot of different spells to cast, even if you had no limits to spell casts per encounter, simply because of the action economy. in any given situation, there's a #1 best spell to cast, then a #2 best spell, then a #3, etc... Mostly what having more spells does is extend how large that list of spells is, and not necessarily increase the quality of your actions. (this is especially true for priests, who are less like a spell-casting toolbox in the way druids and wizard can be; druids and wizard have different damage types, for example, so diversity can increase your spell quality by improving the odds that your #1 best spell is really effective in a given situation.) Typically with priests especially is that I pick up generally at most two spells per tier (and sometimes just one), because combined with the bonus spell, you're already set for spells you want to cast most of the time. In rare situations, I'll pick up another if there's a particular niche that just isn't fulfilled otherwise and is all-or-nothing sort of thing (so even if it's situational and rarely ever the #1 best spell to cast, those situations in which it is useful are extremely impactful, like the various revive effects). Otherwise, even though single-class priests don't have particularly amazing passives, a weak passive that is active all the time is a much better use of finite level-ups than an extraneous spell you pick up and is almost never used.

See my original comment. Though omgFireballs is right. Psions have infinite interrupts and are also handy to have (though imo is a role that could be fulfilled by any other class with a crossbow or arbalest).

Wow, the woedica temple is a level 4 area?? Where does that number come from? On PotD+upscaling that final fight is so brutal (garrotes everywhere, an enormous amount of sustain, hard-to-hit paladins) that I don't attempt it until like level 8.

that's the problem, unfortunately for you. as alluded before, the raging debate over difficulty in Deadfire has sort of been resolved against being able to roflstomp everything at max level - the fact that you could do this in PoE1 was generally considered to be a bad thing. Personally, I still think the difficulty curve is a little light at the end (it's not helped by the fact that the actual main endgame didn't get any major bumps even as SSS and FS had significantly amped-up difficulty), but as one of those people who argued vociferously for a much harder PotD all the way to the top-end of the curve, I'm pretty happy with where it stands. SSS will definitely test your skills, and FS even more. I've done it with plenty of parties so you aren't required to metagame to specific solutions, but there are certain setups that are dramatically easier, for example (having a paladin or two for the changeling encounter for example, since you don't lose the auras when shapeshifted). I think megabosses are far guiltier of requiring specific metagaming - for example I can't imagine doing Hauane O Whe without either a paladin or chanter, and lots of crossbow/arbalest proficiency (or a specifically built monk). if you want a "harder" experience that maps onto PoE1's PotD i think veteran is actually a better fit - you can add in god challenges to mix it up a bit. Deadfire PotD+upscaling can be way more punishing than anything in PoE1, and at this point it's by design.

ironically, berath's challenge makes it even easier to become immortal, because you can de-aggro enemies but still stay in combat, which is valuable for tactician, but also valuable for Shroud of the Phantasm since you can still whack yourself with a fire wall or summons to trigger brilliant (1% chance on being hit on the cloak). In my experience, you want to avoid combat because: combat (mostly buffing) can take a really long time. Probably most of the time passed in my run was just buffing. Pre-buffing for one of hte megaboss fights, for example, easily took half a day. When you have Eothas's challenge on limiting the # of days you have, you don't want to waste time if you don't have to. I ended with probably ~10 days left, but I needed a cushion of a few days in case something didn't work out. A few unnecessary fights and that really starts eating into your window. combat is the main place you can fail. It is possible to make mistakes. For example all you need is for Vela to become un-withdrawn while you're in the middle of recovery or something and BLAM end of run. because combat is the main place you can fail, why expose yourself to fights if you don't need to? the interrupt thing is not a big deal - if it is messing up your run, all you need is rekvu's helm (easily bought in Delver's Row) and an injury. Tons of ways to get an injury easily. Outside of combat if you self-target a spell and knock yourself out, that doesn't count as gameover, you just stand back up with an injury (what I did in my run to collect an injury).

ironically, the actual BG games had your items disappear from the ground and many containers (hence why a stronghold was useful). in the manual, it even provided an in-universe explanation (people are coming by and taking items), so it's not like people coming from a nostalgia angle had an in-built explanation about items lasting forever. it could have lent itself to soft-locks if you left behind an important quest item, but IME that's a solvable problem (Deadfire definitely makes sure quest-important items stay on your party at all times; i've had characters equipped with quest items get annihilated [stupid disintegrate] and while everything else falls into a pile on the floor like loot, the quest item explicitly goes into my stash). whatever, Deadfire doesn't have the problem, so that's good enough for me.

PoE1 had long load times because of a bug where the more items you collect (even if you sell them) the save file inflates dramatically. Deadfire doesn't have this issue, and at least on PC/macOS has much faster load times as a result. I in fact will never touch PoE1 again because the load times were just so awful by comparison.

oh i just meant that the fury gives you a special spiritshifting from ("elemental") that i would never voluntarily choose for any kind of caster. given that the fury is geared towards offensive-casting, the fact that a Cat-form animist, lifegiver, or ancient could all dump out offensive spells better (ignoring PEN issues) is kind of ironic.

in case boeroer's note isn't clear the cat flurry ability gives +33% action speed for a short duration. you can extend it with a priest's salvation of time. if you care about your weapons more than cat claws, you can immediately shift out of cat form and the cat flurry buff stays on (it's not contingent on cat form). importantly, this means you cast spells hugely faster, so it's not just a weapon-attack benefit. because of this, i generally always pick the cat form for my druids - the fact that the fury sticks you with an elemental type makes it ironically quite bad for casting DPS

related, with BG-style games, the problem is that you are loading in one gigantic map, so i'm not sure there's as much streaming/segmenting that you could do compared to a shooter. and it's not like an RTS where it's essentially tile-based with assets and design optimized for fast load. it would be "clever" if obsidian did some smart predictive thing and started to stream in areas as soon as you clicked on an exit indicator (like a door or map edge), but ehm given the developer bandwidth they have this might have resulted in even buggier behavior (there was a pernicious issue with quicksaves/quickloads not correctly restoring state, which would be the closest analogue to this smart-streaming idea). edit: but sweet jesus, 1.5m to 2m for a single area is insane. are you sure you don't have a failing storage medium? even on my ancient haswell-based PC i don't have load times nearly that long.

in Deadfire there are items that care about injuries, so very occasionally I *want* to set off traps deliberately with party members to trigger injuries. so keeping that option open seems valuable. also there are parts of the game where you can't go around a detected trap (e.g. it takes up the entire path). in such a case I'm going to willingly set it off just to get to where i'm going.

blood mage - only restores mage spells. you need shroud of phantasm and self-damage (wall of flame is popular) to trigger brilliant, which you can extend perpetually with Salvation of Time. tactician - if you're invisible or withdrawn (and vela is out of combat or also withdrawn) you de-aggro the entire enemy party, but Berath's keeps you in combat. This puts you in a game mechanics loophole where you trigger tactician brilliant. You can buff perpetually with Salvation of Time. But you still need shroud of phantasm because there is one fight you can't actually de-aggro (Water Dragon). However, against bosses, mule kick plus perception resistance/immunity is a great way to have brilliant up perpetually regardless. (edit - the actual mechanics of tactician brilliant are more complicated then that. there's a distance check, for example, so it's possible to be too far away to trigger brilliant. some enemy AI--mostly in SSS--will still try to snoop around for you even when invisible and sometimes even when withdrawn!) helwalker - taking damage is irrelevant for most of the game because barring death's door obviates the need to worry about it. most of my ultimate run I was at 1 health.

i'm going to skim through the vid later, but extra congrats! i really thought monk would only be viable single-classed for wotw-based reasons, so happy to hear i was wrong.

is blood sacrifice a free action in TB mode? because blood mages could infinite-spam delayed blast fireball, which is much more powerful.

there should be a distance indicator on the ship combat interface, center bottom (in meters). you also get a slight visual clue in the art on the right, the closer you are the bigger the art

mostly just how one of their three main offensive abilities (in addition to frenzy and shouts) is expensive, underwhelming, and one of the upgrades is obsoleted by something even multi-class barbarians can pickup.

just here to chime in and say that this is the case. i thought they stacked in my last run, and ended up respeccing out of CB once I realized I wasn't getting stacking benefits. poor barbarians

of all platforms i expected to be the most stable experience, linux was not one of them, no offense. macOS also has this hitch (though after catalina broke everything i'm frankly amazed that deadfire runs at all)

yes i played with lots of mirror images. yes, it is annoying. the most annoying part is that the underlying game is still occurring - it's just the rendering that's frozen. so i've gotten into the habit of hitting PAUSE as soon as everything freezes for a bit, so nothing critical happens while the game is desperately trying to load in the mirror image (a lot can happen in PotD difficulty). though amusingly, i also used it as a "oh ****" detector because in one game i had aloth set up to auto-use mirror image in certain situations, so if the game suddenly hitched it acted as a "aloth is in trouble!" alarm i've discovered something similar happens while playing as a beckoner - i pause as soon as the summons get brought in, because the game is desperately trying to load some graphical effect and i pause to make sure nothing horrible is happening while rendering is happening. edit: it's clearly some engine inefficiency... maybe some sort of storage data seek? a really inefficient algorithm? because i've had this hitch on literally every machine i've tried it on, even an extremely beefy machine with a 2080 Ti.

1. if it all possible i would push it to 20 res. deflection has increasing returns, so you really want as many points as you can, and humans are one of only two races capable of hitting 20. i would drop a couple of perception so that you can hit 20 res (if you equip a small shield--like tuolito's--you can get very good accuracy anyway via the shield modal). do be warned that even with max resolve and a shield, on early PotD you will still be getting hit a lot due to enemies getting +15 accuracy. Things get a little better once you can get weapon and shield style, enchanted shields, +resolve or +deflection gear, but it'll be rough at first. when i roll a forbidden fist for the early part of the game, i tend to favor constitution as well for this reason. 2. i'm not a monk expert, but afaict there's nothing particular about forbidden fist that makes it good for wotw, right? i mean, wotw is a decent skill regardless. but you would have to be careful - you would probably want a shield, and even with tuolito's palm equipping a shield will reduce the damage potential of wotw.

worst-case scenario, you can just give a particularly squishy party member Rekvu's Cloak, which lets them turn that tiny fire damage into even tinier health regen, so long as they have an injury. but yeah, some heavy armor goes along way to making powder burns ineffective against your own party members. eder (and any other fighter) can also pick up unbending and some decent intellect and each of those powder burns hits will proc a small healing effect (that can heal more than what they are taking damage from with enough intellect/buff duration boost). ...unfortunately that also tends to apply for enemies as well. it's mostly useful against squishier mobs, but mostly combo-ed with other effects such as streetfighter or ones do something upon hit (the shield cracks [chanter] or combusting wounds [wizard]). otherwise it's kinda lame on veteran and up because of AR, unless you are able to pick up spirit of flame. the upshot is that in practice, hitting your own party members is not really a concern. it makes it harder to bottleneck enemies in doorways, but the dps boost otherwise can be metagamed to be worth it.

wuh oh - does versus evil have a bug report forum? they might be the actual ones in charge of the port.

dumb question - i thought wall of draining always worked, regardless of whether an enemy had a buff or not, so long as it hit?