JerekKruger

Except nudity ≠ sex. The only definite nudity we know about is a man, in a bath house, facing away from the camera. That hardly falls under the umbrella of "sex sells".

Nope. This was a collective sub-crowd funding project which has now been completed. The results should be available to everyone, all you've missed out on is the ability to influence them.

Yep. Ogres are born with a club in their hand, and if they ever lose it a new club grows in a matter of days.

I actually prefer Concelhaut's Staff in Deadfire. Here's a screenshot of it: As for the Spirit Lance, here it is: I am hopeful (and fairly confident) that this isn't the final graphics for it, but rather just the particle effects that will eventually be applied to a 3D model. In which case Josh could have said "we're testing a new version which is more powerful" and we'd have at least had hope that it would be improved in a future patch. As for the damage incentive, there isn't one. It drains, which improves your survivability which, in turn, might allow you to do more damage, but it doesn't directly do more damage than the equivalent quality mundane staff.

To be honest I tend to forget to use my Chanter's invocations half the time. They work so well as a passive tank, shouting loudly about some angry dragon, that I forget that they can also shout loudly about the some particularly cold winds they once experienced.

Doesn't it suffer a bit from Finishing Blows Syndrome? Sure, you're doing a lot of damage, but you're doing it to an enemy who doesn't need a lot of damage to kill.

Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff has no quality enchantment between levels 1 and 4, is Fine between levels 5 and 8, and is exceptional between levels 9 and 12. Based on PoE I'd expect to find non-summoned weapons with those same quality enchantments at around the same level, or perhaps a little later (of course Deadfire might be different in this regard, with Fine and Exceptional weapons coming later). Other than its scaling quality enchantment, it has no other damage boosting property (in beta3 at least). So honestly I find Josh's post hard to believe. The same Battlemage wielding an equivalent quality non-summoned weapon has the same damage output, saves a few seconds time at the start of combat summoning their weapon (even with the changes it doesn't look like summonables will be instant cast) and has an additional level one spell cast to use on something else. The fact that Josh highlights his Wizard's ability to out damage Aloth dropping AoEs is quite telling since, at least in the current beta, an AoE Wizard is hardly the final word in damage dealing (if anything they're fairly poor). So I agree: his reply feels very much like a dismissal.

Nudity and sex are part of the human experience, which is what art explores. Including it for the sake of including it won't make a game more artistic, but not including it out of the fear of a(n irrational, in my opinion,) taboo might make it less so. In the case of Deadfire, the only nudity that we know for sure I'd in the game is a nude man, facing away from the camera, in a bath house (there might be more, but that's the only thing we're certain of). In this particular case I'd say that it would detract from the scene to have everyone dressed: it would be an obvious pandering to (in particular American) society's attitude to nudity.

The Nature Godlike's ability is really good for certain builds. A Nature Godlike Wizard can activate their ability using Infuse with Vital Essence, an instant cast spell, and the extra power levels work really well with spells like the various Minoletta missile spells. The Death Godlike is pretty bad still. I don't want to be at low health and enemies at low health are typically not terming anymore.

You haven't explained why contacting email support is "wrong information" that did be ignored. Things like this are literally why they exist.

What? Why? Who else is going to be able to help?

No argument there: spells seem overly nerfed in Deadfire. Never found that to be the case in Pillars, can't see any reason it would become the case in Deadfire.

That's sort of how it was in Pillars. Spells had high base damage but spell casters had very few +damage bonuses (Priest's Minor Avatar was one). Worked fine there I'd say.

Ah my bad. Do abilities like Swift Strikes reduce recovery or spells at all? I believe Frenzy did in Pillars. Doubt it. +50% multiplicative damage bonus is pretty huge. The higher level spells would have to be pretty insane.

In MaxQuest's screenshots it shows the recovery time for claws as 2.8s (4s base, -30% Dual-Wield). Doesn't that mean they're dual weapons?

More likely it didn't balance well with Wizard/Druid and Wizard/Priest multiclasses. Either you make Wizard spells lower damage to take into account the bonus that these multiclass characters would get, making single class Wizards poor damage dealers, or you leave Wizard spells at reasonable damage levels and make Wizard/Druids and Wizard/Priests overpowered. Not really. Monks synergise extremely well with Citzal's Spirit Lance as it currently is. More generally the Wizard has lots of instant cast self buffs that work well with any melee class. True. I can't say without testing whether this is balanced or not. It certainly seems like a powerful option.

He's achieved the, reasonably, impressive feat of being the second person on my ignore list.

If the staff (and other summoned weapons) we instant cast it'd be fine I think. It's not the best weapon around, but it's not terrible. However spending time summoning it does make it a lot less appealing. I'm probably going to mod all summoned weapons to instant cast in my game.

Yup. As did the lash from Priest's spiritual weapons. As you might imagine, +50% damage was pretty insane, particular with Might (or Resolve) being multiplicative rather than additive. It seemed obvious that it was a bug to me. Did Josh actually saying it was working as intended?

Once you reach Citzal's Spirit Lance I think it's viable. The Lance seemed underwhelming at first since it lost its huge base damage, but the ability to proc on hit effects on its AoE hits makes it extremely good at the moment. Even if that is removed as a bug it'll remain good. At the moment my problem is its graphics. I believe they aren't the final version (just being the particle effects that'll live on top of the final model) but if what we have is the final version then it's a huge downgrade over PoE's Spirit Lance (which was very cool looking).

Definitely agreed for PoE. Had they imported them as is into Deadfire it would have been ludicrous once combined with multiclassing. A nerf was definitely in order. That said, I think they have gone too far with some. In particular Firebrand is awful (though a flaming lash similar to the Priest spiritual weapons would be make it decent) and Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff is probably not worth the spell cast over other spells most the time. *It might be burning/piercing.

A consequence of the earlier non-universality of grazes I'd guess.

Power level increases the duration of summoned weapons. That's all. Personally I think it's the wrong choice: single class Wizards should summon more powerful weapons but lose out on various cross class martial abilities and passives, and conjurers should summon even more powerful weapons at the expense of a more limited spell selection, but Obsidian disagree. As far as I know the increased recovery time is as a percentage of the base, so if the base is 0 the increased time will remain 0. I'm not 100% certain, but I think you can't use summoned weapons whilst in Ogre Form.

I think this is what bugs me about the former Vancian casters in Deadfire. In Pillars the idea was that they had limited resources (casts) compared to Chanters and Ciphers, but made up for that with flexibility (more spell choice) and the ability to front load their output during hard fighters. Of course some players rest spammed, removing the downside*, but that was the idea. In Deadfire you're given, in essence, a lot more casts. Yes, compared to that upscaled Magran's Faithful fight where you dump your entire grimoire as fast as you can you've got less, but in most fights you're going to have a lot more. However you no longer have the flexibility side of things. Not only do you know far fewer spells than you did in Pillars, but limiting you to 2 casts per level also limits your choice. I don't really know what the solution is, but right now Vancian casters feel like a let down to me. *On a side note I honestly think that simply removing all camping supplies from containers in Pillars, having them only be purchasable at shops, would remove this problem for most players. Only a very small number would repeatedly return to town to buy more in order to continue to rest spam.

To quote Josh: So they're going to become faster cast but I wouldn't hold your breath for anything more. Now I'd say their actual power varies depending on which weapon you're looking at. Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff is a decent weapon (draining plus a scaling quality modifier) but I find it hard to believe it's ludicrously powerful. Meanwhile Citzal's Spirit Lance is extremely powerful, at least in some combinations and in its current form. This is because, much like Barbarian Carnage in PoE (but not in Deadfire) the AoE effect of the Spirit Lance can proc various on hit effects which, when combined with some multiclass combinations, is very powerful (the same is true of the Minor Blights I believe). As for non-Wizard summonables: Firebrand is garbage (with an instant cast it would be situationally useful for a Priest of Eothas, though not worth choosing for a Druid) whilst the Priest Spiritual Weapons are very powerful (they have a huge lash which, currently, increases spell damage, but even if it didn't it'd be good on a Priest who plans to use his weapons).