Balbanes

AFAIK, subclasses are just regular classes with an extra ability. So maybe use the console to remove the "wild mind" ability? You can try adding another ability/subclass as well.

I liked the shrine. Not for the benefits per se, but because it temporarily changed my playstyle from "who cares about injuries, I have 100s of hardtack" to "gotta keep everyone standing to keep the boost." Made for a nice change of pace.

This. Although as I recall, there is a certain quest where you need to find a character disguised as an "unimportant" bystander. In that case, the UI does not give the game away by pointing out which bystander is the one you're looking for...

I read the statement and I have to admit it turned me around on balance tweaking. I even personally experienced some of the benefits with 1.1: upon learning that Nature Godlike had been nerfed to +1 Power Level, my first thought was "oh good, now I don't have to play Nature Godlike on my monks and casters." So I'm sold on the idea of tweaking game mechanics. But you never had to. You chose to. People conflate "choosing to build the most optimized murder-machine possible" with "I have no choice but to do it this way!" all the time, and it's really annoying. At no point was a mountain dwarf caster any less viable an option for beating the game, it just wasn't as optimal. Nobody ever *had* to play a Nature Godlike on monks and casters, on any difficulty, at any time. Sure, if you want to *SOLO* the game, or pull off the Ultimate, that's a different story. But if you've got a whole team of five people, then it really doesn't matter what difficulty your playing on, your race just doesn't make that much difference by itself. Yes, need for optimizing goes up as you go up in the difficulty levels, but not to the degree that a specific race/class combo is necessary all the time, every time, just to beat the game. They're all viable, that's literally one of the design goals. I think you may be reading too much into the phrasing of what was literally the first response that entered my head.

There should be a way to both improve the game and not alienate the player relying on the prior build. I think it would be fairly straightforward to make the "tweak" portion of the patch optional, for instance. Pretty much every multi-component mod has that feature.

I read the statement and I have to admit it turned me around on balance tweaking. I even personally experienced some of the benefits with 1.1: upon learning that Nature Godlike had been nerfed to +1 Power Level, my first thought was "oh good, now I don't have to play Nature Godlike on my monks and casters." So I'm sold on the idea of tweaking game mechanics. What I'm not sold on, and what Josh's post doesn't address, is the idea of tweaking game mechanics mid-campaign. It's one thing to learn that a cool concept you wanted to try won't work anymore. It's quite another to learn that a cool concept you spent dozens of hours building won't work anymore. Using PnP as an example: if a GM were to nerf a particular character into oblivion, through no fault of the player, then the GM damn well better offer the player some recompense. Otherwise, the player is likely to quit the campaign in disgust. Let's give a concrete example: the Chanter "Set to Their Purpose" nerf. The pre-1.1 version was clearly an oversight, as 1) it doesn't make sense that a tier VII ability continually regens class resources while a tier IX ability only adds +1 class resources, and 2) upgrading from two Level 1 Inspirations to two Level 1 Inspirations and a Level 3 Inspiration makes no damn sense. What's more, continuously regening class resources is plainly game-breaking, and any fight that would seriously challenge a party with "Set to Their Purpose" would be near-impossible for a party without it. So this is an excellent example of a nerf that had to happen. And yet. I imagine there were players who built their entire party (or solo-run!) around having limitless access to class resources. Further and as mentioned before, "Set to Their Purpose" is a Tier VII ability, which takes no small amount of effort to reach naturally. So a player who has spent dozens of hours on a party that no longer functions would be justifiably upset. This is the reason players complain about nerfs but seem to ignore boosts. Boosts don't ruin anyone's existing campaign; they just make less popular builds more viable. But nerfs have the potential to render irrelevant dozens of hours of investment. Players tend to remember that. Not sure how to address this given existing technical limitations. Ideally, players would have the option to apply the latest set of tweaks to existing campaigns, with new campaigns automatically incorporating those tweaks. But that would require keeping potentially dozens of patch states alive on a given computer. Maybe give the player the option to not install the latest set of tweaks until desired, while still installing bug fixes, quality-of-life changes, etc.?

Oh, you sided with those Principi. I sided with the Aeldys faction: pirates who know they're pirates and just want to do some pirating before the end of the world. Had to respect their purity of motive.

In the absence of an in-game reward, I apparently can't be bothered to romance anyone. Case in point: Tekēhu reserved that room at the Wild Mare weeks ago. Meanwhile, my Watcher is exploring literally every scrap of land in Deadfire. Awkward!

Annoyed I didn't get my Llengrath bonus.

Yes. That remains the only fight I've actually used Empowering on. For everything else, I can't be bothered.

Agree, there's no indication the gods would know about pre-Engwithan life. I further note that the gods aren't terribly bright-- while they have access to additional info by virtual of their long existences, they aren't any better than kith at deduction or problem solving. IIRC, Berath suggests that the gods are actually *worse* at decision making, since they are all required to obey their assigned roles. Thus even if the best course of actions involves not betraying anyone, Skaen gonna Skaen. Also, query why Eothas didn't pull this stunt earlier. Perhaps he couldn't, and his death freed him from his programming, Agent Smith-style?

Dichotomous Spirits already weren't all that good; now I'm definitely not gonna bother*. Not sure whether this was fixed for release, but in the beta patch Watery Doubles and the Phantoms were just auto-attacking—which, needless to say, made them completely useless. No idea how they plan on making them useful if you can't control what spells they cast, when, and where. Regardless, you're better casting literally any other spell of the same level. *Oh, wait, I actually am gonna bother since I'm restoring 1.02 files to avoid all balance changes. Except it's very sad that I need to resort to this and miss out on all changes I agree with. Isn't switching from Party to Team a good thing? Sure you probably can't control them directly anymore, but I never bothered to control my meatshields valuable contributors to the cause. More importantly, being Team means my AI buffers and healers won't waste precious spells buffing/healing dudes who are utterly disposable invaluable.

So much this. I don't mind fixing abilities that aren't working as intended, even if that fix "nerfs" the ability. But spending time and resources tweaking abilities that are working correctly, e.g. from 25% to 20% or whatever, strikes me as poor prioritization. This isn't a multiplayer game. The various classes and abilities do not need to be perfectly balanced. Any player upset about how "OP" some ability is can just not use that ability. I'd rather the devs have Deadfire correctly recognize my PoE choices, get the companion relationship system to approach sanity, add quality of life features, etc. than endlessly tweak abilities that aren't broken.

Has anyone tried romancing Tekehu with a Moon Godlike? They're both children of Ondra, so maybe the weird "mother" dialog is different.

It's a chain of quests starting with you burgling Arkemyr's Manor. Ah. That was going to be a quest my Watcher never did. "Burgle an arch-mage's mansion for some book? Are you mad?!" But now I'ma break character and do it.

Oh my.. that is... a terrible idea I don't think I could ever finish that playthrough. Also you're in for a surprise if you romance Aerie. Just saying. Haer'Dalis actually is extremely useful, especially when you get the upgraded bard song he's very powerful. I tried, I really tried to romance Aerie. But after the umpteenth complaint about the trauma of losing her wings-- wings <CHARNAME> never had, made to a guy who just saw his sister kidnapped and half his companions killed, to say nothing of the trauma conga line that was BG-- I just had to tell her to STFU. And that ended that.

Giggle. Always wondered what people thought of the only romanceable male character. Personally after the first playthrough I've always randomly murdered Anomen just to rid the world of his whining I started a new party with all characters I hate: Aerie, Anomen, Cernd, Nadia, and Haer'Dalis. It's been... interesting. Sidenote: Haer'Dalis is really good! I don't remember Blades being that useful in the original game, but he's tearing #$#% up in EE.

Exited tutorial island, ran into his ship, and welcomed him aboard after asking about his talents. Except... he's not in my party. Or on my ship. I never got the "choose their class" dialog box either. I assumed he'd meet up with me later on, but I've since made it to the big island, cleared almost all of the quests there, went to the next story island, and cleared that too. And no sign of Serafen. Did my game bug out, or was I supposed to pick him up somewhere along the way to the big island?

I think the relationship dialogs may be bugged. Anyway, my Eder has been kind and supportive, and I've seen 3ish companion dialogs where he says he's got my back and will follow me come hell or high water-- which is not just an expression in Deadfire! But I'll note my Watcher is still hung up on Iovara and thus made no effort to romance Eder. Perhaps he keeps his distance if he senses more-than-platonic feelings from the Watcher?

hum..sorry , but I think you got it wrong . When you take her to the Adra pillar , I choose to 'Keep the soul' instead of 'releasing them' . When I picked the release , she went vampire and ate them . I think THAT give you the bad ending . I went with 'Keep the soul' and she tell me 'are you crazy!?"..and then lament that it hurt but she will do her duty regardless . unless the game is bugged that is and reversed stuff My Xoti did as I asked. Perhaps it's a function of the Watcher's reputation with her?

Yeah, Troubadour is really powerful and extremely flexible. I can't help fearing it will be nerfed soon, especially since the release nerfed hit-to-critical effects, making Troubadour a better skald than the Skald.

I haven't mained a priest of PoE2, but I did try to set up Xoti that way. It's not really working out: thanks to the lengthier cast times, it takes a while to set up my buffs and debuffs (Interdiction takes a while now!). So much so that by the time she's done, I need to either recast expired buffs/debuffs or else heal my group up. There just isn't time in the rotation for nuking.

Paladin's aren't too limiting, roleplay-wise. You just need to avoid the two types of disfavored dialog responses. There's a menu option to show which dialog options affect which dispositions as well.

Is this a genuine accident, or more like how I "accidentally" shoved Durance into a certain blood pool?

Or just let characters save ability points to spend whenever they want. Most games let you do that these days.