Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

I think this here is the updated version of that thread for Deadfire: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95847-attackaction-speed-thread/ I'm not sure if the app has been updated for the latest patch though -- i think armor recovery penalty now also effects reload.

In my test playthrough, I’m pretty sure affliction and inspiration cancel each other. So if you have blinded affliction, I can use bless to remove blinded, and vice verse. I'd double-check -- I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure at this point that Sawyer's summary is accurate. Inspirations do cancel out afflictions, and we as players see a lot of that, but it's relatively rare for enemies to be buffed, so we don't often see our offensive casts getting blanked out by enemy Inspirations. Where it is visible is when enemies cast AoE debuffs that hit an Inspiration that's already in place over the whole party -- you'll see the Affliction pop up then immediately pop up below that again, but crossed out, to signify that it's been cancelled. (So you never see it on the mouseover, either -- it's instantly wiped).

Wasn't Hel-Hyraf substantially nerfed in the recent Beta update? (From -5 Armor to -2?) Is the consensus still that it is useful/necessary? It was, and Penetration as a whole is a lot less important than it used to be because they "softened" the curve out, but given how much bonus damage you can get from overpenetrating, it still feels very much worthwhile to me. -2 is still a pretty big deal, that's the difference between chain and leather. It won't matter all the time but when it matters it really matters.

Honestly I barely use it ever, just because I like the Enervating Terror more (fourth level pick is usually pull of eora and missiles). It used to be you could used Repulisving Visage to trigger disengagement attacks but that doesnt' work anymore from what I've been told. Generally iset triggers for foe aoes and manually control plain aoes. Since visage is foe are (I think) an "enemies in melee range" trigger would be easily set. One neat fighter trick that does work, is you can script Into the Fray to prioritize the furthest target in melee range of an ally (I forget the exact settings I use, sorry) and the fighter will use it to sweep up all the random adds who aren't close to him but are still close to someone else.

At least in the beta, it's harder to protect your squishies, but more because of encounter design than because of AI; there are fewer encounters with narrow chokepoints and more in open terrain or with only partial cover (say, a blind corner, but two large open rooms on either side). The AI does seek out your squishies but they'll generally attack what's closest to them first. Fighters also have a good Pull ability and monsters are fairly reluctant to break engagement, so with scripting the fighter will gather in the enemies around himself fairly effectvely. To be fully accurate though I haven't really built any characters who are pure tanks without some other threat, so I'm not sure if they'd get ignored or not.

Are the ones consigned to the blood pool actually dead? Also, you spelled "Grieving Mother" wrong

I'd missed this thread before now but my suggestions would be: Aloth as a pure wizard because you don't want to miss top end Wizzy spells Eder as a fighter/rogue because his job is tanking and damage, not flashy abilities, and a fighter/rogue is a master of both those things. I suspect there's a high-end riposte tank build lurking in his stats somewhere, but you'll have to get his Deflection *very* high as riposte currently functions only off of misses, not grazes. Maia Rua -- you have to be a pure ranger for Twinned Shot. Pallegina: Paladin/chanters with shared flames and the burning lash chant and a lot of summons are one of the most effective builds period right now. She can't be a beckoner though, sad. Make sure to get Hel-Hyraf's for those hard to penetrate monsters. Serafen: no idea, Barbarians lost carnage proc'ing on-hit effects in Deadfre, so it'll depend. Tekehu: Druid/Chanter for the same reason as Paladin/Chanter above -- buffs and summons. Xoti: you'll probably want a pure priest in the party just for counters and heals and inspirations and wiping afflictions with suprress affliction. Whether it's worth multiclassing her will depend on the value of the top end priest spells and whether or not it's worth it to hit the higher level priest stuff faster. Fassina: Conjuror + Chanter seems like a decent pet class but normally the wizard subclasses are a little deprecated due to lack of flexibility. Konstanten: maybe good for the same reason chanters are good. Barbarian doesn't have much synergy though with pure chanter. (Maybe skald if that's allowed? but I doubt it). Rekke: ok why do you hate Eder Ydwin: Cipher/rogues have pretty good synergy but it's a shame she can't be a beguiler.

Don’t they attack with both weapons regardless. I equipped my rogue with two pistols recently and I am pretty sure he would fire both pistols during auto attack... I am pretty sure one of them should be empty. You are partly right, your rogue will do a full attack before reloading, but after reload he will only attack with one pistol and then reload. But full attack ability will still allow them to use both firearms, which is strange to me... When auto attack, reload only works on one pistol, but when you use full attack, that offhand is mysteriously reloaded too? I'm still trying to figure out exactly what happens when you go blunderbuss primary / pistol offhand, and then set the pistol to Fast Reload modal. The blunderbuss definitely fires first, then . . . . they alternate? or not quite?

Hrm, that's a good point. There's also the big issue that a lot of the modals which would be useful, are never gonna get used, because it's too fiddly to tell when they're useful. If weapon switching and weapon modals were something you could script in the AI, a lot of the ehhhh modals would be more useful (for example, switching shield modals or quarterstaff defensive stance on and off if an enemy is engaging you). The system is good in concept it just needs another design pass.

I half-suspect that "rebalancing all the weapon modals" was planned but might not happen before release. They've felt like placeholder values from the start. I think a lot of them might find a use once we get into the full game though and can compensate for their downsides. For example I can see the pistol modal becoming very useful once and if people figure out how to stack accuracy super-high, because accuracy has a ceiling where it stops adding to damage. Similarly, if people figure out how to stack recovery bonuses to get super-fast (which was the dominant strategy in the first game) then all those recovery penalty modals might turn out to be great (what's +50% recovery if your recovery is down to a single frame anyway?). Like a lot of other things it's gonna all depend on what gear etc. is available in the full game and that's probably part of why they're waiting on the rebalance.

I got no idea but I'm going to *suspect* it's hand code, mostly because of the kinda wonky nature of most of the conditionals. No real idea though, modding is a step beyond my brainmeats.

Yeah, I've had this (weird bugs with loading shipboard autosaves) happen, and a similar bug where I started up the game fresh and loaded an autosave at the start of a ship combat, and at the end of combat, it never actually ended -- I had to go to world map manually, no combat rewards.

Generally it isn't possible to set illegal targets, but I think there are some situations where you can set up if then conditionals which can never occur

Yeah, the only real hard counter for buffs are things like Arcane Dampener that explicitly remove inspirations. So you want that in your list, but at the bottom. Why at the bottom? Oh, mostly because you want to make sure they've buffed up before you wipe them, and you want to cast your debuffs first if you have any that can land.

Yeah, the only real hard counter for buffs are things like Arcane Dampener that explicitly remove inspirations. So you want that in your list, but at the bottom. Oh also: the AI is really bad at placing spells such that they don't damage allies, so "foe only" is way more valuable if you're AI driven.

You can set most buffs to target [self or ally] has inspiration (type) (checkbox NOT), then cast (inspiration type), to reliably buff everyone who needs it. For debuffs, you want to set the above and also has affliction type (not), because inspirations always wipe afflictions, so you don't want to cast an affliction unless the target has neither. From what I can tell, to set Intellect inspirations to wipe charm, you have to set the "target type" trigger to include "enemy" ; this is the only time an Inspiration will have "enemy" as an allowed target so you don't have to worry about buffing real enemies. To get "consecrated ground" to trigger reliably at the "clash point" between the two sides, it's generally best to set it to BOTH "threatened by anyone in melee" and "threatening anyone in melee" . For armor debuffs, "has heavy armor equipped" seems a decent proxy; not sure if it interacts with natural armors though. Make sure to set "Action set cooldowns" for spells you don't want cast repeatedly before they expire (say, again, Expose Vulnerabilities). The second time through it won't check the conditionals though (bug). Put your "always on" attacks (minoletta's missiles) at the bottom of your action list, or the other conditionals will never be reached. Nature Godlike wizards can inspire themselves at the start of a fight to get the nature godlike bonus.

Yeah this is a bigger issue than it seems. Like, ok, I'm picking proficiencies, theoretically only proficiencies are what matter since anyone can use any weapon, but it would be REALLY helpful to know that (for example) Battle Axes have bonus Critical Hit damage when I'm creating a high-perception character.

It could be groundwork for a to be implemented later feature, I suppose. Maybe it's just for scripting in encounters.

Started a new game (PotD, auto-levelling turned on). Went directly to the lady to hire a new party of custom adventurers. Typed "addexperiencetolevel 9" to level myself up so i COULD hire new adventurers. Hired a group of four level 8 adventurers. Typed "Addexperiencetolevel 9" to console them all up to my level. Went through and started manually levelling them up; noticed an error that they could not actually use appropriate skills for their level (for example, the single class priest could not access level 5 priest spells). Reloaded a save and realized that the hirelings had all hired at 3rd level rather than 1st; so they "missed" some level ups (the "first" click on the golden plus sign giving them a level up from 3 to 4, instead of from 1 to 2 or 2 to 3); so they were stuck permanently behind in terms of skills/abilities.

Oh -- I'm unclear on how exactly the various spell tags (freeze, fire, etc) work and interact, but a drastic expansion of those interactions would be a great thing to blatantly steal from D:OS.

Related question -- What exactly are all these spell tags supposed to do, other than trip the various passive perks? Anything? For example, if I cast Blast of Frost on someone weilding a Firebrand sword, should the sword go *poof* and vanish? What about on someone in a Flame Shield? If there's a Chill Fog in an area and I cast a fireball on the same area, what happens? What about if a character with a Firebrand walks into that area? Or is none of this anything that actually happens and the tags are cosmetic?

The most recent beta patch is a drastic improvement --- pretty much every class and subclass is at least functional now. There are still a fair number of bugs but they're mostly small bugs at this point -- broken text strings, etc. The biggest one I can think of is that the Pollaxe weapon has no weapon data right now. There are still some major balance issues but they're mostly stuff that's overpowered, not underpowered, and it's possible to avoid that stuff by just not picking it -- don't play a nalpazca, etc. That said if you want to wait there's no harm in waiting, either. I think the game will be perfectly playable on release (I was worried before the last patch, I'm not worried now), but I don't think waiting is the worst thing in the world either.

Pet peeve but it bothers me how often the ships sink. Sawyer said in the stream Friday that ship hull health is higher now but a morale element might help too; ship crews were far more likely to surrender until the ship was exploded.

You can repair your sails, use the Report function. This needs to be made clearer in the UI,.

Yeah, that's part of why I think that a "remove inspirations" ability is so important. One thing Josh said in the stream yesterday is that there's a late-game ability for Fighters that's just "basic inspiration, in every stat." Note that this makes the fighter immune to sneak attack, at least in a 1v1 situation (where the Rogue can't get Flanked). Rogues need a way to wipe inspirations. EDIT: replace strike the bell with an ability of the same name that removes all inspirations from the target each of the three higher level iterations then adds a different affliction effect (stun, blind, whatever)