JerekKruger

I am fairly certain that, just like in PoE, Aloth will have exactly the same body shape as every other elf in the game, with only his face distinguishing him from others (and in the case of Aloth, I don't even think he had a unique face). Also if you think Aloth should be a pure Wizard then, as far as I understand it, you will be able to level him as a pure Wizard. Multiclassing is not, as far as I am aware, obligatory.

Cold resist. Resolution 3 is absolutely great if you can reliable avoid anything ever attacking your Cipher (and after level 15 when you can use Defensive Mindweb to make your whole party super tanky). Personally I don't like dumping stats as low as 3, so I might consider something like 14/8/16/16/16/8 For a versatile build. At level 15 you might want to respect since Defensive Mindweb is so powerful. Any particular reason you've chosen Aloth, Edér and Durance as your companions?

An office.

I am not opposed to this idea. Chanters are obviously powerful, but I don't particularly enjoy them. Unless I am mistaken, one of the ideas behind the Chanter was that it would have a fairly passive combat style. Would people prefer to see that remain the case or is that part of the problem with the class in your view?

I'll have you know getting money out of me is like getting blood from a stone, and not one of those creepy looking stones that bleed type stones, a regularly work a day non-bleeding stone like granite.

I dunno, I am fairly certain this was worn by basically everyone back in Scythia

I like the art style in PoE a lot and am happy for it to remain consistent in PoE2. I don't get it, could you explain it in more detail?

The pros in my case are mainly that it coincides better with my next pay cheque and it gives me more time to weigh up exactly which tier I will back at and what extras I might want. Beyond that I am generally a procrastinator when it comes to this sort of thing, though that's not so much a pro as simply an aspect of my character.

You can have your islands when you pry them from my cold dead hands... or towards the end of the campaign, your choice.

The later enchantments don't even need to be more powerful, they just need to be varied and interesting enough that, upon finding a new enchanted weapon, it's not a simple matter of which one is better or worse. For example, which is better: a sword that allows the wielder to turn invisible once per encounter for 5s or a sword that allows the wielder to blink 15 yards once per encounter? It might be that, after lots of testing one becomes clearly better than the other, but at the very least if I have one of those and I pick up the other I will pause to consider which I prefer, and perhaps even try both out for a while. I completely agree. I want to actually spend some time playing with my fancy toys rather than be given them with only a handful of fights remaining in the game.

I feel like the solution is not to enforce a ceiling on how high early equipment can be enchanted, it's to ensure that the variety in unique enchantments is sufficiently wide so as to make later items still be appealing. I think the problem with vanilla PoE was that none of the unique enchantments were particularly exciting (there were better ones and worse ones, but they were all pretty bland), and whilst the White March I improved this a lot, this suddenly meant that a lot of the most interesting items were available fairly early on, pretty much ensuring that later items would all feel disappointing.

As one of the procrastinators, I can confirm that I will probably be backing right near the end of the campaign.

Agreed. It's a strange world where I find myself impressed by the Temple of Eothas Bell Puzzle because, unlike almost every other game, it split the solution between several incomplete books rather than simply having a single note saying "the solution is XYZ". I know that hard puzzles can be frustrating for many, but for some they are fun, and we live in the world of the internet where if they're really too frustrating a solution is never far away.

I can assure you I haven't boned PoE once But yeah, attributes aren't all that important. That said, it depends on how Berath's blessing works. If it gives you five extra points to be distributed as normal, subject to racial maximums then that's not that big a deal*; but if it allows you to go beyond the racial cap using those points then, for example, starting with 25 Intellect as a Barbarian is pretty damn powerful. All this said, people have been suggesting rather large numbers for the bonus attribute points. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you only get +1, or perhaps there are six different blessings each which give +1 to a specific attribute. Pure speculation on my part of course. *It's still equivalent to one of the +10 Fortitude/Reflex/Will defence talents in your lowest defence, which is nothing to sneeze at.

I can understand this feeling, but I suspect it'll be easier to resist spending blessing points on additional attributes that, say, deliberately spending less than your full allocation of 78 attribute points. The latter feels like you're deliberately leaving something out, whereas the former will (hopefully) feel like you adding something in.

Whilst I definitely agree that it's stupid, it has been a problem in a surprising number of games for a surprisingly long time.

Yeah, I suspect this will quickly become the standard format in the builds subforum. After all, people can always choose to modify a build themselves with Berath points, but it's a lot harder to unpick exactly where someone might have spent Berath points and remove them.

If this is something that bothers you, then you are always free to not meta game. If you find you can resist the temptation to meta then either it doesn't bother you as much as you think, or you need to work on your impulse control. Either way, what other people are, or aren't, doing should have exactly no impact on your own enjoyment of the game.

That's the system I'd prefer to see Gangich, but as you say it's unlikely to be the system Obsidian are going with.

By that reason you should hate all CRPGs since you don't start at max level with all the best gear.

I suspect the first part will simply be a tutorial skipper in the style of Dungeon Be Gone from BG2. Tutorials don't usually have any significant choices, and it's usually a simple matter to simply put all equipment available directly in the player's inventory and give them the experience they would have received. A more in depth content skipper would, as you say, be rather more complicated. For the latter, at least for me, there will be almost no difference between choosing my favourite weapon to keep from a list or from the ones I got in a previous playthrough, since I pretty much always get every single item in the game (and I am a terrible hoarder). That said, it actually specifies Soulbound, and I suspect it's not just about being able to start with the item but also start with it fully unlocked.

One thing that's perhaps being overlooked: assuming, as is likely, that this system will run on local data about achievements (in order to allow non-Steam/GoG users from missing it) it will likely be very easy to give yourself the maximum number of Berath points, either by modifying game files, downloading maxed saves or using console commands. Whilst some might be annoyed that you still have to do this, at least this would provide a method to experience this content without having to complete at least one playthrough.

To be fair, limaxophobiacq did say that this stretch goal was "kind of making me wish they somehow don't hit 2.6 million." Maybe not drama per se, but a pretty extreme view to take on the matter. Anyway, if this does get backed (very likely) then I expect Obsidian will make sure it's available without being logged into Steam or GoG's Steam equivalent. You have to be logged into Steam to get Steam Achievements for a game, but there's nothing stopping the game also tracking achievements internally (as someone else suggested).

I checked, the head is on floor four. It's possible to kill Maewald without seeing the hand, which is past the spider queen fight. If you did this, the only sign of the statue would be the finger tips grasping the chapel in Caed Nua, and it's not clear to me that you'd guess they were finger tips without seeing the hand as well. Of course most players will have explored at least a few floors of Od Nua so will have figured out that it contains a statue, and for any who didn't, they'll soon find out.

Given that PoE allows you to have unspent attribute points when creating a character, I'd imagine Deadfire will allow you to leave these "blessing points" unspent as well. I might be wrong but I'd be surprised if you're forced to take them.