Enoch

Yeah, even for a melee Chanter, a Troubadour in Brisk Recitation mode can spit out Offensive invocations at about the same rate as a Skald can. Probably better, if no crits are flowing in. It's probably sub-optimal, overall, but I still like Skalds for non-summoner melee Chanters. You get fast Offensive invocations without giving up Phrase linger, so you can keep 2 phrases up most of the time with decent INT. The bonus phrase on crit is a nice boost when it happens, but not crucial to the concept. Troubs are far more flexible, but I don't like having to decide whether I want to be in passive or active mode all the time. And Skald just suits the character I'm playing now, who is a lot of fun-- a dual-War-Hammer War Caller (Devoted/Skald).

Yes. Additionally, summoning invocations are categorized as "Non-Offensive," so they cost more Phrases for a Skald to use. Definitely use a Troub, Beckoner, or even a no-subclass Chanter if you plan to do lots of summoning.

Had an odd perhaps-related occurrence. On loading a quicksave at the Dig Site, the game gave me an XP reward for progress in "To Hunt a God," with the mouseover telling me that the quest was 100% complete. The Journal, however, has the quest as still open and the "Search the Engwithan Ruins" goal unchecked, with the most recent addition being simply "I'd better look around. Maybe I can find out what he was after." All my party was doing at the time was standing around on the "middle ring" of the dig site, near the lower of the two entrances to the Training Hall-- I hadn't yet ventured down to Draketown on the bottom level or entered any of the side areas (Foreman's, Training Hall, or Adra Pool). Could be a save-load issue causing duplicate quest-progress XP awards?

That's based on a raw count of how many dialogue/interaction nodes acknowledge each variable. It doesn't reflect the significance of them-- many just insert an aside like "you're from around here, so you know what it's like" and progress into the next node just like it does with a non-qualifying character. So the total number isn't going to tell you a whole lot.

Optimal choice for the story experience is the one that you like. The differences aren't all that significant. Skills and faction reputation drive dialogue/storybook options more than race/class/attributes do, and Obsidian did a better job than they did in the first game, where nearly everything was RES/Lore/Orlan/Cipher. The only thing I'd strongly recommend is that PER is now the most important stat for both conversations/interactions and in-engine gameworld exploration (spotting traps & secrets). It's also among the most important combat stats for a lot of builds.

The avatar:

Explosives skill description (in level-up interface): 1) Either drop the "The" or add "skill" after "Explosives". 2) Inconsistent use of the Oxford Comma. Either add a comma after "damage" or delete the one after "noisemakers", depending on what the in-house style preference is. (But count on my stern disapproval if the option is removal.)

MS is filthy rich with money. They throw a huge sum of money to Feargus and Co and they become fat happy and rich. Probably can even stop making games and enjoy life. If i'm Feargus and Co i probably do the same. It's all about money.

https://twitter.com/Obsidian/status/1050189816430641152 Obsidian AMA tomorrow to "answer questions about Obsidian, Pillars, and the recent @shacknews long read, Beneath a Starless Sky!" The lineup in the picture (Dowling, Aruga, Bell, Brennecke, Kirsch, Dollarhyde) doesn't include any ownership-types, though. So, despite the "Rumors" hype, I'm guessing that questions about possible sale of the company will only lead to more clever deflection.

Over the past couple decades, there haven't been a whole lot of independent game development companies for which things end well. A 14-year run as its own thing-- in spite of a whole lot of missteps along the way-- is pretty remarkable. If this is how it plays out, slow digestion by one of the big players probably works out a lot better for the owners and employees than closing up shop after one disappointment too many.

I've never liked Ciphers. I've always found Psionicists to be an incongruous fit in D&D-type settings (one that, in my experience, always attracted the wrong type of players), the degree to which they seemed to be the developers' favorites in Pillars 1 bugged me, and the charm-spam that they tend towards feels cheap and un-fun. I've played for a while with Witch Serafen, but end up forgetting to do the spellcasting most of the time.

This one seems like a big deal for some builds. I've been away for a bit-- was this something folks were expecting?

I have to say that I don't quite get the enthusiasm for Triumph around here (in either game). It brings healing in big chunks, sure, but it's also unreliable regarding who gets healed and when. Ideal use requires metagaming killshots, which is a pain. And, more fundamentally, healing matters a lot less when it comes after defeating an opponent. If a character actually needs such a huge shot of healing, waiting for them to score a kill is playing with fire. I suppose it can make an all-offense melee'er functionally immortal when surrounded by fragile enemies, but those kinds of situations aren't generally the fights that pose a serious enough challenge to drive build decisions. Hard spell for me to justify using, particularly compared with the others in tier 4.

The best unique Priest of Wael interaction happens in the scripted interaction when you sail through the reef near Motare o Kozi. Also entertaining: when you use Minor Intercession to get rid of plague aboard your ship.

That's one possibility, but I prefer the guess I posted in a different thread:

Wael never asks for a vow, nor grants a boon. They just tell you what they think you should do with the souls, and leave it at that. And, as far as I can tell, there is no bonus in Deadfire for having done they ask.

You just have to not be a Wael follower.

I have traveled a lot with those two in my cirrent laythrough and didn't see any major interaction as of yet. Theyr devotion to oposite faction put the at odds, but reputation wise they seem to get along. Has to do with the details of how they set up the reputations. Maia has Pro-Rauatai favored and Pro-Huana disfavored. Stuff affecting the other factions doesn't move her needle. One could conclude that she respects the VTC/Principi as adversaries, but thinks that the Huana are to blame for their situation due to their disunity and general backwardsness. Pallegina has Pro-VTC favored, but none of her other preferences are faction-based. (She saves her ire for religious pro-Godlike racists.) There's some room for mutual respect here. Mostly in their shared devotion to dunking on Tekehu.

2 places I've found Adra Ban in v2.0 that I haven't seen reported in this thread: - A container in the Collapsed Coal Mine - One of the turned-to-ashes Rathun at Ashen Maw (middle of the Ashen Bridge map) Both were accessed at a near-maximum character level.

I know I'm going to name the character after a drummer, but I haven't decided which one.

That was a balance change in 1.2.

For somewhat arbitrary role-playing reasons, I'm probably making my next character a Devoted-Skald who uses War Hammers. A War Hammer War Caller, if you will. It's almost certainly not optimal (i.e., it's not the singing scimitar), but it's stylish, and War Hammers certainly have some things to recommend them-- high PEN, a dual damage-type, you can get one of the best ones very early (20 PER turns off the traps at Sandswept Ruins, so, with good starting PER and some drugs, you can run for Last Word straight from Maje), and all 3 of the unique War Hammers have odd and interesting on-crit effects available. I am still debating with myself whether I should go with 1-handed or dual-wielded Hammers. Stylistically, I'd prefer 1-handed, but I suspect that the consensus in favor of dual-wielding is correct from an effectiveness point-of-view, and it generally is more fun to get to use more interesting gear.

A) Yes. B) Isn't that how most actual people are? Virtually nobody is steadfastly devoted to being, say, "Passionate" or "Shady" in all circumstances. (That said, it is fairly arbitrary which responses get tagged with a Disposition and which ones are Disposition-neutral. I don't fault anybody for turning the UI option to display them in advance on, at least until they have a very good sense of how Obsidian writes these things.)

For what it's worth, I have also had this happen as a "weird one-off" in a previous game version, which, to my shame, I didn't bother reporting. In my case, I think something went wacky in sneaking in and trying to pull the Xaurips, etc., to the SE part of the map. Reloading a save on the world map and replaying the cave in a more straightforward charge-in-from-the-entrance manner avoided the problem somehow.