Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

Not surprising since Feargus was one of the primary culprits in establishing the over the top tone and going overboard with pop culture references in FO2. Then again, he doesn't really have that much influence for Deadfire's writing. Sawyer likes to keep things grounded and he didn't appreciate some of the more whimsical characters from BG. Didn't Sawyer include a big bunch of the Wild West items in FNV and write like all of the wacky stuff in Old World Blues? I know Sawyer wrote the Something Secret quest in PoE 1, which is pretty hilarious if your mind goes to that angle.

If there isn't a belt buckle belt item that's shaped like a ship's wheel, it'll drive me nuts.

This build looks pretty decent overall. The main gap I'm seeing is that it isn't updated for the White March 2 expansion and later patches, which has a few implications: 1) The enemy AI is much improved, so I don't think it's as good an idea as it used to be to drop Con all the way down to 3. You'll need a little more survivability, especially on PotD. I mean you *could* you'll just lead your party in "times unconscious." 2) The powers added with the WM expansions aren't covered (time parasite is probably the worst rank 7 power now, as it doesn't stack with Deleterious Alacrity of Motion) 3) there are a few gear options I don't see mentioned, mostly from WM 2 (but pick up Angio's Gambeson in Dyrford for Deleterious Alacrity and keep it upgraded).

That's exactly why I like the Tyranny setup though -- the type of item doesn't change, so you don't get endgame mooks running around in daedric or whatever. They just have really high quality bone clubs or what have you. I'll agree that there's an immersion issue to be dealt with though.

I suspect that all the announced stretch goals that aren't met, will become DLC down the road.

I hope this is something that comes with the factions. I'd like to see Rauatai using a different style of weapons from the Pirates using a different style from what we're used to in Dyrwood, etc. Really, considering how far away we're travelling, we probably shouldn't see many standard western-style weapons at all.

This occurs to me to be something we should probably be pointing out as a thing they can improve on or fix in PoE II.

On high levels we have a lot of money and we won't be able to even spend this money enchanting items because they will already have best enchants. That's useless and bad for economy. There's a chance you meant another thing but i pray to Eothas you didn't. Have any of you criticizing this actually played Tyranny ? The way it works is basically 1) Take a given item like you'd find in PoE -- say, Leadspitter 2) The unique enchant (rending) doesn't change) 3) the quality enchant (fine, exceptional, accurate 1, accurate 2) changes depending on what level you do the content. What this means in practice is that you can find very nice items early in the game because the devs don't have to worry about locking the "best" gear behind high-level gates, and then you can keep upgrading them all along throughout the game, which is exactly the thing everyone was just saying they like about PoE's system. PoE 2 is going to be extremely open world. Allowing scaling on random loot in open world games allows for a lot more freedom -- I don't have to feel locked in to doing content in a specific order so I can get loot at "optimal" levels and so forth. Obviously scaling can be overdone and it's a matter of hitting it "just right" so that you can still overlevel content without other content becoming trivialized by advancement elsewhere. But it's doable.

Witcher 3 and the old Gold Box Pool of Radiance and the original Deus Ex.

Hiravias is also very much worth considering as a tank. Give him big armor, a shield, and a hatchet and just park him in the center of the enemies and have him cast Returning Storm.

Double-barrelled blunderbuss where each barrel has a different personality and voice actor and they argue with each other and one of them makes mouth noise KABOOMs instead of actual gun sounds

Yeah that's a good point. A buffing priest can get away with lower Per.

I think that depends on your character. A ranged character can get away with dumping Con and Resolve a bit. Melee classes, not so much. Mid-rank classes like a priest, you can probably shave a few points off but I wouldn't take either down all that low.

There are two main differences in PotD: 1) You'll face a lot more enemies at any one time, and 2) You will always be at a points disadvantage vs those enemies (in terms of accuracy, deflection, etc.) Crowd control thus becomes really important as does buffing and debuffing. You want to prioritize accuracy buffs to a much greater degree than is necessary at lower difficulties, and you want to open your fights with debuffs. The main thing I'd personally change in your given build is that you're taking Perception kinda low. It's a much more important stat on PotD than it is on lower difficulties, because you start needing the accuracy bonus in order to land your attacks.

I think boats are a special case where there's a correlation between "realistic" designs and aesthetics. Well-designed boats are attractive and unattractive boats tend to sail poorly. There are even decent reasons for that -- symmetry helps a boat sail effeciently, hydrodynamics dictates certain types of hulls will perform better than other kinds and those hull shapes are inherently fairly attractive, visually disproportionate or imbalanced elements are likely to also be physically imbalanced and thus impact sailing. That sort of correlation between aesthetics and function isn't true for most other things you'd see in a video game (armor, weapons), or at least not in the same way. A sword can be ugly and still be effective, but the same is rarely true of a boat. The main "sin" the Defiant commits in the pitch video is that its aftercastle is disproportionate to the rest of the boat. That's an aesthetic issue and a "realism" one, but the two issues are linked -- the same disproportionality that makes it look bad would also make such a boat sail poorly. Of course if that's the equivalent of your "newbie ship" it's not necessarily the end of the world for it to look and sail kinda weird!

It's also just fine for each progressive level up to give you "less", subjectively speaking, as long as the rate of change is proportionally constant. You play less and less of the game at or above each successively higher level.

"Offends" is stronger than I'd say. I'd say the current ship design distracts. It's workable enough but if they can improve it that'd be even better. (and I do hope that there's at least some attention paid to things like wind-direction in the pre-combat narrative blurbs). That's the point of feedback at this stage -- to point out areas where what we've seen so far could be improved, if the dev team decides they have the resources to do so.

Oh I'm sure. I think they just got their historical designs a little mixed up, or were working from historical drawings / sketches that weren't, like, actual ship blueprints. The Defiant we see in the pitch video isn't bad, it's a good first draft, it's just weird. I suspect they were working from a drawing of a Cog and then probably heightened the aftercastle a bit so that party member models could walk in and out of it easily, without realizing how weird that would make the rest of the ship look in proportion. Yeah, this is how other games handle it. Just go to transparent overlay.

entangled rigging only works as an explanation with a z axis. and very much depends on who is windward, etc. making far too much a blanket explanation. even so, the rigging explanation is not gonna have so enmeshed and entangled as be reminiscent o' a movie mummy. only gonna be small points o' common contact tween two ellipses, and those points o' contact should be constant shifting. again, you are working hard to explain away an implausibility... which is ok. the thing is, the same effort could be used to simple explain away current boat shape. HA! Good Fun! ps having been on sailing vessels which have ringing become entangled, we can tell you it is a comple charlie fox scenario. still got momentum o' two vessels which were unlike on exact same vector. plus you got wind and waves and angry sailors. is not predictable. Right, but there's no need for complete 100% historical realism, just so long as nothing breaks suspension of disbelief. The current apparent "both ships line up next to each other then everybody fights" system is workable enough. But it could get a little weirdly repetitive across multiple repeated fights, and adding a little more variety to the boarding angles and allowing for things like boarding across the stern and the like would just add some depth. I'm not sure if cutting your ship free mid-fight is something that they need to add or not. I think it's probably better from a gameplay perspective to assume that once the ships are locked and we load the Boarding Combat map, the ships stay locked until the fight is won or lost.

Given I wasn't part of those discussions, I have no idea what you're trying to say in this post. Feel free to expand on how I am being selective. first question: are you offended by the lack o' plausibility o' poe armours? if you are not, then feel free to do a search for b00b armour. again, is not applicable to the current thread save to observe how selective folks is being with their plausibility concerns. pj gets his way and if plausibility is a genuine concern, then during any kinda boarding party combat you is gonna have two boats which will not slide right up next to each other like tetris pieces. gonna now need explain away the inconsistency o' two rough ellipses bouncing around yet staying relative perfect aligned. so now we need grappling hooks and gaffs and that still won't explain away the lack o' movement 'tween the two boats as they heave 'gainst each other. not to mention having created the unnecessary fighting in a basement quandary as only one small portion o' each boat will in fact align. so, w/o any z axis possible, am gonna need be able walk 'cross at a single narrow point, which is implausible and limiting from a gameplay pov. HA! Good Fun! pss and recall, as pj were by shape o' the boat, he advocated a sail plan requiring wind come from two directions at once. folks is oddly selective in their willingness to suspend disbelief for the sake o' gameplay needs. is no seeming way to create an objective scale for such arbitrary choices. Actually I'd really like to see at least an attempt at "accurate" boarding actions. Keeping ships together wasn't really an issue -- the rigging etc. would get inter-tangled. It would be great to see the grappling hooks shoot across, ramming, charging the enemy ship across the bow or across the stern, etc.

Thanks for the tip re: heart of the storm. I agree that Stormcaller is probably the best endgame choice overall. The only real issue is that Stormcaller is even better given to Sagani. And there's something to be said for the heavy alpha strike KABOOM of the blunderbuss. When this was first written and the thread first titled, Blunderbuss was by far the preferential option, for a few reasons that got changed later ( they lowered the number of projectiles and WM wasn't out yet, among other things). Anyway, FINAL EDIT: I've ported this guide over to Steam here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=871584933 Future updates & edits if any will be to that version.

Exactly. It's a bit like how my view on fantasy armour changed once I learnt about why historical armour was designed the way it was. Suddenly armour that used to look badass looks dumb. another pandora's box thread. am tempted to resurrect the old poe development threads regarding armour, particular female model armors. honest. folks is being mighty peculiar and selective with their willingness to accept the implausible. HA! Good Fun! Oh yeah, it could be. And I don't want to imply that the Defiant is, like, World of Warcraft armor shoulders or anything. It's subtly off. But in a way that's almost worse -- it's like it falls into an Uncanny Valley of ship design where it's both too historical and not historical enough.

One thing they could do is have different factions have different tech levels and ship types. Like you show up from the Dyrwood in a cog because Aedyr and the Dyrwood are not a shipping nation, the pirate faction has junks, the rauatai have age-of-sail sleek-ass racing sloops, or hell, racing clippers, the vailians have frigates or even galleons, etc.

It's a nice enough ship unless you have experience with wooden ships (I've just played a lot of really, really detailed naval themed computer games -- stuff like Naval Action where every ship is based on very specific historical models). If you're familiar with actual period ship designs it's . . .just right enough that it's not technically wrong, but still wrong enough to be deeply upsetting. My guess is that the artists were given images of medieval cogs to use as inspiration and then at some point someone messed up and started calling it a sloop because it technically fits the definition (single masted, fore and aft rigged) even though no sloop would ever have that huge an aftercastle.

THANK YOU. Them calling it a "sloop" was really bugging me on a fundamental level. I was trying to figure out what the Defiant actually was and was leaning towards diagnosing it as a single-masted caravel, but you're right, it's a cog. And a weird one at that. We reached the other ship types option, so hopefully at least one of them will be a Junk and one an actual period sloop. Junks aren't brick-shaped either. They have the same basic teardrop shape, except truncated at the bow and stern a bit more sharply. The sides bend out just like on European ships. Hydrodynamics and wood are the same everywhere. Something like this would be great. Junks would be period appropriate too.