JerekKruger

It's only one fewer than Pillars had at release and, by the sounds of it, they'll be significantly more fleshed out than they were in Pillars. Add in the sidekicks, which are likely as deep as, say, Pallegina was, and it's not that bad to my mind.

I love that you can pick up little titbits of information about the full game from these patch notes. It's renewing my excitement for the full release. The Resolve change is surprising. I remember Josh (I think) saying that reducing the duration of hostile effects wouldn't work well because it would apply to enemies as well, so facing a Resolve 25 Dragon wouldn't be fun. Still, it seems like a nice, fitting addition to Resolve and I hope it works out well and that attributes are now finished. Oh that's a shame, I was hoping to see what their final form would be. Ditto!

I am going to go with option 3: not so secret enemy.

It has a scaling weapon quality enchantment. From level 1-4 it's ordinary, 5-8 it's Fine and 9-12 it's Exceptional. Presumably, though we can't currently check, from level 13-16 it's Superb and from 17-20 it's Legendary. Obviously we can't say for certain when you'll find non-summoned Fine, Exceptional, Superb and Legendary weapons, so it might give you a headstart on some of those, though I doubt by much. By the to end of that range I'd expect you to have found some powerful enough non-summoned weapons that completely outstrip it, but then you'd be using Citzal's Lance out some other summoned by then. Actually that leads to another problem with it, and any other spell you'll eventually stop using. Because you can't learn should from grimoires, picking something like the Parasitic staff eventually becomes dead weight, taking up a slot that you could have used on another, more long term useful spell.

In terms of doing damage it's no better no. It has draining, which is a nice property to have but not one that directly raises damage output. Note that, as a first level spell I think it's in a good place (apart from the long casting time). Yes it was much better in PoE, but you couldn't multiclass with a melee class in PoE (also in the long term the scaling quality enchantment means it'll end up at least as good). The objection is to Josh's claim that is actually ludicrously powerful and, hence, doesn't need a faster carrying time. Unless it's completely different in his version of the beta that's clearly rubbish: it's no more powerful than a mundane staff with the same quality enchantment. A 5s delay night not be much (with the current speed of combat is quite a lot) but ultimately it is a DPS drop when compared to using a non-summoned weapon.

That's why I really don't understand why Obsidian decided to make summoned weapons scale with character level rather than power level.

Given you can't select them at level up it's quite likely they'll be grimoire only spells i.e. you'll have to have Ninagauth's grimoire equipped to use his unique spells.

@SaruNi - you just made me realise that spells like Shadowflame are in the game. Just consoled all the uniques from PoE that are level 5 or below to try them out. Shadowflame is nice, but its base cast time is currently 8s: that's a veritable age of man. Interestingly Concelhaut's Draining Missiles has a 3s cast time vs. Minoletta's instant cast time, making it kinda bad.

Have you tried the Death Guard plate Boeroer mentioned? It might fit the bill.

Hopefully it's a sign that the update is coming sooner rather than later: the fact there were patch notes in a form ready to be posted suggests that might be the case. Fingers crossed for this weekend.

Yeah I think Obsidian missed a trick with the Shifter subclass. Instead of giving you access to all five forms they should have made shifting a modal and added a few abilities and passives that only work whilst shifted. As it is currently it's just a bit of a mess. It's not a bad subclass since the healing on shifting is pretty useful, but it isn't particularly interesting or fun and feels thrown together.

To be fair the Watcher is a (possibly green) murder hobo too. I'm not saying Edér should listen to Eothas, but perhaps he shouldn't be listening to the Watcher either.

Sure, but even buying them all (as I usually do since I'm a bit of a hoarder) I still have mountains of cash left over.

There is one fight which is potentially more challenging than those two - but I have a feeling that you will be fine.

Now who's the monster

There's an unwritten premise here: attractive young female nudity sells. Having a bunch of fat old naked men (a pretty common sight in bath houses) in your game doesn't boost sales. But honestly, even if Obsidian did fill the Deadfire archipelago with nubile and naked young women I doubt it'd have much of an impact on sales. Third person isometric nudity isn't much of a selling point in a world with games like the Witcher 3.

Personally I think you should be able to cast Minor Blights a second time and dual wield those More seriously I also like the fact that even if you don't equip a melee weapon in your offhand you get the +12 accuracy for using a single weapon. Makes the Blights, which already have a big accuracy buff, very accurate.

Could be worse, you could be a Conjurer.

Ah, I think I see what you mean. By nuking you mean casting a single big (probably AoE) damage dealing spell? I assumed you just meant damage dealing. As damage dealers the three Vancians are arguably the most powerful classes in the game when you don't hold back, but I get where you're coming from insofar as the big spells not feeling that meaty in Pillars. I think it's clear Obsidian are aiming for slower, more meaty spells in Deadfire, but in the current beta I'd say they just aren't meaty enough to make up for their speed.

Well they are, if anything, worse in the current beta. That said my own experiences of PoE don't match with yours: all three Vancian casters could do huge damage if you were willing to dump their spells. In particular Wizard + Deleterious Alacrity of Motion = empty grimoire in no time at all.

I have an inner Sans!

Beat me to it

Fluffle's the person to ask but as far as I remember there'll be a small group of pirates somewhere in the game (the eponymous Black Isle Bastards) who will have in their possession a log of their victims (references the people who funded it) and there'll be a special piece of equipment as well.

If you see it in motion it feels flat. That's why I suspect it's not the whole graphics, but rather just the particle effects (the whole thing is moving, no stationary parts at all).

I think people sometimes forget that we have one underneath all those clothes.