JerekKruger

And I'm almost certain that they have changed, probably in 3.05, since I did a full 20 day cycle test of Raedric's Hold's main floor containers and items like the Gloves of Manipulation didn't appear at all. EDIT: interesting indika_tates. Thanks for testing that.

You can't Durgan reinforce soulbound items, at least you couldn't last time I tried.

I like the levelling feature of soulbound items, particularly the way the lore is slowly uncovered whilst doing so. It would be nice if, in Deadfire, we get some soulbound items early in the game, and they level along with our characters e.g. when you first find the item it's Fine, then around the same time you start getting Exceptional items it can be levelled to its next tier making it Exceptional etc. More generally, I agree with much of what firkraag888 says about the performance of the various soulbound weapons. In particular, the nerf on the proc rate of the Unlabored Blade really wasn't necessary. I disagree with his opinion of Stormcaller however, at least when it's used by a Ranger. With Driving Flight and Twinned Arrows it procs Returning Storm a lot, it has dual damage types and benefits from Heart of the Storm for all its damage, and its Shock DR reduction debuff is excellent.

Yeah, I tend to agree. There are two pretty good swords that are available late into the game (Cat's Claw and Last Blade of the White Forge) but because the selection of swords before this point is fairly poor, I pretty much never use swords. It's one thing I really hope they improve in Deadfire: make sure that all weapon types have a fairly even progression i.e. whatever weapon I want to use, make sure there's a decent early, mid and late game option. I'd say that's another thing that works in Bittercut's favour: it's available pretty early on. Depending on what your main character is, I'd even argue that it's easier to get than Resolution, and certainly long before Purgatory.

Pillars of Eternity: Tactics? I'd back that I think.

Yep, I believe the ones in Durgan's Battery are a guaranteed drop. They also appear as 'random' drops in a few late game locations.

Attack speed bonuses on weapons with reload times only affect the recovery time, not the reload time. That's why Hold Wall's bonus is barely noticeable. With war bows vs. hunting bows, the recovery is based on the attack animation speed, so war bows have longer recovery than hunting bows because they have long attack animations as well. Because of this, war bows do indeed get more absolute benefit from +attack speed (i.e. they'll save more frames) but the relative benefit (increase in attacks per second) should be roughly* the same. As for Sure-Handed: yes, I believe you get no benefit from the reload bonus. *Roughly because of the 5 frame delay, that isn't affected by anything, taking up a larger proportion of a hunting bows overall cycle than a war bow.

Well Spirit of Decay is +0.2 damage on all hits for Bittercut, rather than +0.5 on just crits. On top of that Bittercut is dual damage type which is probably a few points of DR bypass equivalent on average. Whether that's better than the +0.5 from crits with Purgatory and Resolution depends on crit rate I guess.

I don't see this as a bad thing myself. Play another game or do something else altogether probably.

This pretty much. If there was some magic, zero time/cost way of adding multiplayer into the game then I'd have no objection, but since adding multiplayer would be costly (both in terms of time and money) I'd rather Obsidian focused their resources on making a great single-player game.

Since I am colour blind and looking at Max's table on my crappy laptop screen it's hard for me to be sure, but I don't think the Reloading Phase Duration uses armour recovery penalties (Orange Coefficients in Max's table) in its formula. It seems to be calculated from the weapon's base reload duration, the bonus from Dexterity, and the following talents/abilities: Gunner, Sure-Handed Ila, Swift Aim and Vicious Aim, with Sure-Handed and Swift Aim not stacking. Whether this means it's best to go heavy armour or not is a different question. If you are confident in your ability to avoid combat with your gunner then it's still probably best to use low recovery armour for maximum attack speed. It might not result in much of an increase in speed, but it's still something. I'd say the advice should be "armour recovery penalties are less important for gunners and crossbowmen". From the point of view of auto-attack DPS I don't think so no. However both Badgradr's Barricade and the Dragon's Maw Shield can be useful in certain circumstances (tanky Barbarians are an example). If you can reach zero recovery with a two-handed weapon then it'll out DPS dual one-handers thanks to it's higher damage per hit (two-handers don't attack slower than average one-handers, and do a lot more damage than fast one-handers). On top of this, +X% damage modifiers are more powerful on two-handers than one-handers, since that +X% damage applies to the weapons base damage. As such, on classes who can reach zero recovery without dual wielding, and which have a few +X% damage modifiers, a two-hander will probably beat out dual wielding. However classes which have access to lots of Full Attacks and which don't get a lot of +X% damage modifiers will do a lot better with dual wielding in general. For example, Monks get fairly unlimited Full Attacks from Torment's Reach, and have no +X% damage modifiers beyond the universal ones, so are much better suited to dual wielding, whereas a Cipher has no access to Full Attacks and gets a rather nice +40% damage modifier so, if they can reach zero recovery, they might do better with a two-hander. It's very important, but its rarely mutually exclusive with other means of increasing damage. Generally reaching very low recovery is more a question about how heavy the armour your character wears and whether or not you mind drinking DAoM potions than sacrificing other damage bonuses. The obvious exception would be vulnerable attack, and in that case I'd tend to prefer to reach very low recovery than take vulnerable attack, though if I can have both by sacrificing armour I might. With dual wielding? Almost any lightly armour class can reach zero recovery quite easily. Without dual wielding? The obvious candidates would be Barbarians (thanks to Frenzy) and at higher levels Ciphers (thanks to Time Parasite). Without using DAoM it's not possible for a lot of classes to reach zero recovery without dual wielding.

Huh, I thought that the candles reignite if you snuff them.

Honestly, I'm just generally, and preemptively, disappointed.

Well I created a new PayPal account for this (my old one seems unretrievable) so perhaps it's a "new person reward"? EDIT: also I suspect this voucher is only for certain vendors (though the wording doesn't make this at all clear) so I doubt I'll get any use out of it.

PayPal just gave me a £5 voucher so I donated another £5. I don't actually think the voucher was used, but hey, I thought I'd try.

Well people want the option; they won't choose that option, but the sure as hell want it and the game will be literally unplayable if that option isn't there

The tables have definitely changed from the ones on the Wiki. In my last playthrough (which was in 3.05) I did a full 20 day cycle on Raedric's Hold and the Gloves of Manipulation never appeared, but a pair did appear in the Copperlane Catacombs.

Yeah, it's a shame, I was looking forward to a Barbarian/Wizard using Citzal's Spirit Lance. My main attack has an AoE, each person it hits it generates a Carnage template, and each person hit by a Carnage generates an AoE

I might test it out later tonight. If it's truly random, then simply checking the Black Hound chest on the same day a few times, using a different character each time, should be enough to tell. The reason for using a different character each time is on the off chance that the tables are "seeded" upon character creation.

Did Obsidian announce that they'd done this?

I can't find a source, but I am sure this is how it was described in one of the Q&A streams or elsewhere.

I think Rymrgand's Mantle still spawns in the Black Hound the day after the earliest you can arrive in Gilded Vale, so you can pretty much guarantee it if you want it.

For the BIB forum badge? You needed to select the appropriate addon when you pledged on Fig. As far as I can tell, you can't add this to your current Fig pledges, however you can make a new Slacker pledge via the Obsidian portal, select the lowest tier (Obsidian Initiate) then select the "Join the Black Isle Bastards Crew" addon for $8. I'd suggest waiting until Fig pledges are moved over to the Obsidian portal however, as hopefully once this happens you'll be able to add this addon to your main pledge without paying the $5 for Obsidian Initiate.

I think so yes.

I'm not sure what AS is, but here's the calculation as I understand it. Recovery without vulnerable attack = max{0, 1 - 2*((1.2*1.15*1.5 - 1) - 0.35)}/1.2 = max{0, -0.44}/1.2 = 0 Recovery with vulnerable attack = max{0, 1 - 2*((1.2*1.15*1.5 - 1) + (0.8 - 1) - 0.35)}/1.2 = max{0, -0.04}/1.2 = 0 So you'll be at zero recovery in both cases.