DozingDragon

Awesome, that definitely seems more solid than Kana’s account, as he is by all means an unreliable narrator when it comes to Engwith.

Would you mind providing those specific pieces of text? I don’t personally recall anything with that kind of specificity in the game, and I would like see what you based your conclusions on.

So, wait...why exactly are we concluding that the madness of Od Nua took place around 800 AI? The timeline on the wikia only references Kana Rua's statement that the paths had been there for 2,000 years. Is there any other specific support for that date or time-frame?

The only permitted multiclass should be the Wildrhymer. Keep on dropping those wild rhymes everybody.

I may have lost track of things, but are certain grimoires still also supposed to provide bonuses in addition to more/exclusive spells?

It’s just optimization, primarily of the new effects I suspect. In the final area of Poko Kahara I get great performance, everywhere else it’s pretty inconsistent. I also didn’t see much of an improvement between my laptop with a gtx 860m and my desktop with a gtx 1080ti.

Isn’t it fair to say that a high deflection has the added bonus of protecting against secondary effects of attacks or abilities that target deflection whereas penetration does not? An increased vulnerability to CC or secondary effects should be enough of an incentive to try to keep deflection and the other defenses at a reasonable level.

Why not stick with the nominative case for ships, and refer to each ship’s captain or commanding officer in the text boxes as well to vary things and keep everything sounding elegant?

Huh, that’s a bummer. Maybe they can bring them back in the expansion pack/DLC.

I was under the impression that trinkets for the other classes would largely be items that enhance class specific abilities, like the cloak that improved constant recovery for fighters. But I could definitely be wrong, or the design concept could have changed along the way.

“Player” usually works to refer to the watcher in the console. Anyone else add Shadowflame? It would be worth using a special grimoire.

And if you have low resolve you have to deal with longer afflictions. I like this idea.

Also, is it just or do too many spells target deflection? Without having equipment quality bonuses that seems a bit out of whack especially when spells don’t typically have a graze range now.

Funnily enough, on my laptop with a weak mobile gpu the final area of the dungeon in the beta ran incredibly well despite only getting about 28 FPS for the rest of the areas in the beta. So I am pretty sure it’s not an engine issue, but maybe some unoptimized graphical effects in those areas.

Shadowflame was shown in a stream, but it is not available to learn at level-up. I assume it’s a grimoire only spell. Arcane veil is available at spell level 3 I think. I don’t recall precisely at the moment.

The lack of meal crafting is most apparent when I have to feed my party raw cooking oil by itself. Quite the delicacy!

Injuries are fine, although bringing back field triage as an ability (so there’s an ability cost) or allowing individual characters to remove injuries through a high cost consumable (a scroll perhaps) would also be fine. If you don’t want to trek on with injuries but you also don’t want to rest then I don’t see why a way to mitigate injuries wouldn’t work as long as there is a sufficiently high cost associated with it.

The spore north of the village drops a grimoire, but only if you choose to fight it in the scripted interaction. I do not believe that grimoire had any special properties, just additional spells.

Oh to be fair, one would realize quite early on that their passive-only wizard is kind of... passive... I do not think such stringent checks would be necessary. As for limiting one to, for example, just the one elemental upgrade, do keep in mind that if such passives were available, one would eschew a spell to get the passive so, that'd be a trade-off. Want +fire and +frost damage ? Good on you, you're not taking these 2 spells though then. You might realize that, and I might realize that, but for someone who may have never played a crpg or even a pc game in general might not necessarily realize that. Plus, go ahead and make a first-level fighter in the beta now. You have to pick one active ability, or at least I did when I made a multi class character. The game forces you to. It’s all about preventing the hapless from making terrible characters no one would want to play. And as far as limiting elemental specializations, I was assuming the designers want to limit the stacking of bonuses like that. I could be wrong, but that’s what I gleaned from the abundance of modals.

Proficiencies largely replace general talents in Deadfire. While the complete lack of passive abilities for some classes should be addressed by adding a small number of class-appropriate passive abilities, I think the system is actually pretty good. However, I wonder if more general talents that are not weapon specific could becshoehorned into proficiency selection. As long as those talents are balanced in the same way, i.,e., modals with a benefit and a penalty, then that could add to the overall level of build variety. Also, I am surprised no class has access to something like field triage to mitigate the need to rest after a single character gets knocked out during a combat.

I agree. Single-class wizards and other traditional spell casters have only three ways their builds can be differentiated: (1) choosing a specialization at character creation, (2) selecting spells when leveling up, and (3) selecting weapon profiencies. The lack of any passive abilities outside of multiclassibg is pretty disappointing, as the only major build choice, specialization, occurs at character creation. Now, I imagine there is some design concern about making it impossible to make a terrible wizard by only selecting passive abilities, or selecting a passive ability at character creation. This could be solved by requiring players to choose a spell during character creation, and also by limiting the total number of available passive abilities. Additionally, a character could be limited to one elemental specific passive ability such as spirit of decay.

Yeah, this pretty much sums it up for me - including the combat speed. And yep, retargetting doesn't seem to work yet. And I'd like to add that I really like those metalinked word descriptions a la Tyranny. I loved the new character levelling trees. However, one small caveat: When you had a tree and you were supposed to pick an ability, there was never any counter on how many you had available. Often 1, but sometimes 2, per level-up. Your only hint at it going on was that your "next"-button was greyed out, if you didn't pick two. And while exploring maps, I have a question: -Why do you see where and what some of the stuff are, with big icons and all, while some is almost hidden ( a slight glitter is visible), and yet other stuff is completely hidden, like surprises? The UI of some of the mercenary characters, like the Wizard's, was literally wobbling during combat. And at the very start, when the party was standing on the dock, our ship was bobbing frenetically. But, after those first introductory lines, the ship began to bob more in tune with the rest of the sea. The level-up interface definitely needs some refinements, as indicated above.

Allowing access to a different spirit shift form via trinkets might work, at least then there's a tradeoff involved as opposed to just earning a superior spirit shift form from a quest.

Beckoner? I would have preferred "spirit-marshal" instead, but for all I know that might conflict with other subclass names.

The Low Sails Numbers.