JerekKruger

I don't really mind to be honest. At first I didn't like the the idea of reducing the party size to 5, but with many of these sorts of changes my objections are based on simple resistance to change, and thinking about it some more I realised I doubt it makes that much difference. If the game is well balanced around 5 man parties then that's fine by me.

My bad, I only discovered that Deadfire had been announced yesterday. I am glad we're starting at level 1 as the level scale in PoE felt fairly bloated by the end of the expansions.

So from the second stretch goal we know that the unstretched level cap in Deadfire was going to be 16. This is the same as the level cap in PoE if you have both expansions which suggests to me that the level scale is a different one to that in PoE. What I wonder is at what level a new character will start Deadfire at and whether imported characters will start any higher than newly created ones. Here's how I see it: Option one: every character starts at level 1. This is probably the best option from a balance perspective but it leads to a bit of a disconnect when compared to the Watcher in PoE, particularly if the player played one or both of the expansions. Of course I would assume level 1 would be scaled up in power, but I doubt Obsidian would make a level 1 with 6+ abilities so it's still going to feel like a downgrade from the end of PoE. Option two: we start somewhere around level 6-8, a bit like in BG2. If this is the case imported characters could perhaps start higher on the scale as they have done in games like MotB or BG2, though if the scale is a new one then it might be better (from a difficulty balancing perspective) to have them all start at the same level. The problem with this is that it puts up a barrier to entry in that character creation becomes a lot longer (significantly more choices need to be made), but it's a low enough level that it shouldn't be too slow so hopefully wouldn't put off too many potential new players. Option three: perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps Obsidian are sticking to the same level scale as PoE. If this is the case I'd suspect that newly created characters would start at level 12 (max level without expansions) but that imported ones would be at whatever level they were when they finished PoE. The reason I doubt this route is that the length of character creation becomes a significant barrier to entry (I never played MotB, despite knowing it was excellent, because my usual hesitance over creating characters was ramped up to 11), balancing difficulty will become a lot harder when you have characters ranging from 12-16, and for those who do import a level 16 character it leaves very little levelling progression to look forward to. Thoughts? Next up, on the topic of importing characters, I wonder how the huge collection of gear most people built up in PoE will be handled. In BG2 its disappearance was handled by having the character start the game imprisoned and having their gear sold off (though I don't quite believe Irenicus would care enough about money to sell gear) but the premise of Deadfire doesn't seem to lend itself to that so readily. If an imported character does get to import all their gear then that's one more pretty huge power disparity (probably more than the difference between level 12 and 16) that Obsidian have to balance difficulty around. What do people think? Will Obsidian find a way to remove most/all gear from the Watcher or will we be starting Deadfire with lots of cool stuff? Finally, companions. If we hit the 1.8 million stretch goal (which seems all but inevitable at this point) we'll be getting a seventh companion. What I am wondering is if that's seven in total, or seven new ones. The reason I am not certain is because of a Tweet (I think) Josh made saying that if you sacrificed a companion to the Effigy in PoE you shouldn't expect to see their return in PoE2. At the moment it looks like we're getting three returning companions (Aloth, Edér and Pallegina*) but that could be cut down to two by Effigy sacrifice, and realistically down to one depending on Aloth's ending (I won't spoil, but one of his endings doesn't really fit with him returning in my opinion). If those three are counted in the seven companions then their absence would be a pretty big hit to the number of companions in the game. What I am wondering is whether perhaps the seven refer to seven new companions excluding Aloth, Edér and Pallegina. Thoughts? *I'm actually really pleased to see Pallegina's return. Her character wasn't well developed in PoE but I liked the idea of her and he VA and model were cool. I hope she'll get a chance to properly shine in Deadfire.

If you don't kill literally everyone in Undertale you're undertaling wrong By the way, if it's not obvious I don't actually think RPGs have to be violent.

The days were pretty wrong in my last play through. Not only that some containers didn't have the same overall loot list e.g. Raedric's chest not containing the Gloves of Manipulation (I did a full month long cycle to check). I suspect in one of the more recent patches Obsidian completely reworked the "random" loot tables.

That's not possible in CRPGs because it's not possible in any RPG. If you look up "player character" in a thesaurus one of the synonyms is "murder hobo"

Think about it in character: your character enters a ghoul filled district, they find a lucid ghoul with a room full of people for food, they free them. At what point along that line would a mysterious voice shout out 'wait, you're risking missing a reward by freeing the dudes'? To block the option of freeing them before doing the tower would be lazy role-playing. Also I can assure you that the talent isn't as exciting as it sounds. It's nice for monks for whom health is basically mana but for everyone else it's basically +1 Might which is a miniscule damage increase (+3% additive means a lot less than +3% in absolute terms (most the time)).

Note that Reflex can be raised a lot through Weapon and Shield Style. Even a normal quality Small Shield gives +8 Deflection, so with W&SS that gives +8 Reflex*, which is almost as much as the talent. Use a Superb Large Shield and suddenly you're getting +28 (+34?) Reflex. As a result characters who are going to use shields don't really need to worry about their Reflex defence and probably don't need to take Snake's Reflex. *It might be +14, I can't remember if the +6 from W&SS counts as part of the shield's Deflection for the purposes of raising Reflex.

A few things to consider: Despite the "you're only cheating yourself in the end" mantra (which I agree with) we have countless examples of people who do still cheat when there's no reward There is a reward attached, namely respect of the community. It might seem strange to some, but many people thrive off the respect of being an "expert" at something. Finally, to many achievement seekers, using any exploit that doesn't actually stop the achievement being achieved is fair game. It's a similar mindset to power gamers and speed runners in that respect. This group, if they don't fall into either of the two previous groups, will often be very open about having used such exploits. This is not to say that the player in question did use this exploit, and even if they did it's still an extraordinary achievement so kudos to them.

At the moment I've gone with 18/8/10/16/18/8 for my base attributes, Boreal Dwarf for my race. I'm only level 7, still in Defiance Bay, as I haven't had all that much time to play (I find I need a good couple of hours to really do anything in PoE). I took Biting Whip, Weapon Focus, Draining Whip in that order (felt I needed the accuracy early on). Powers wise I went 1: Mind Wave, Anitpathetic Field, Whispers of Treason. 2: Mental Binding, Pyschovampiric Shield, <wild card>. 3: Ectopyschic Echo, Pain Link, <wild card>. 4: Body Attunement, Silent Scream. Wild cards just mean that I've experimented with a few powers in this slot. After starting a little weak, this character quickly became pretty powerful. His single target CC is amazing, making fights against a small number of tough foes much easier. Also, with a small shield he rarely gets targetted in melee so long as I let him engage after the main tanks. Obviously no idea how he'll far against the toughest fights in the game yet, but it's pretty clear that he's viable. That said, I tend to think that a ranged Cipher would still be better in a lot of cases (can make stats more extreme, can more reliably do damage in tight confines, some spell targeting is easier as ranged etc.). I suspect once Mind Web appears though this changes since you then become as tanky as your main tank.

Looking at your table again, most attack speed bonuses are blue ones i.e. most are multiplicative. That's not how I thought it worked, interesting.

I'm not Blunderboss (Theurgist is his forum rank by the way) but I can hopefully answer your question. Generally speaking, most builds posted on this forum will be late game builds to some extent in that they list items that aren't (easily) available in the early levels, and class abilities not available till high level. This is because the interesting item and ability combinations only appear later on; in the early-mid game you're mostly rolling with generic fine equipment and most of your class abilities aren't available yet. However that doesn't mean these builds are only horrible at lower levels. Generally speaking they'll just play like a fairly generic version of their class, and this build in no exception. With this build in particular, you have the advantage of being a Paladin. Paladin's are very robust frontliners so you're not going to go through the painful process of being knocked unconscious on a regular basis. Your early game damage is not going to be anything to write home about, and you might be better served using a shield (Outworn Buckler bought in Gilded Vale is an obvious choice and is amazing) rather than dual wielding, though if you want to dual wield from the start of the game you certainly can. If anything, I suspect levelling this build would be less difficult than levelling others, as in the early game being flimsy is the limiting factor for a lot of classes, and the Paladin ain't flimsy. By the way, much of the gear for this build isn't that late game. Theoretically you could pick up Bittercut at level 5 or 6, though more realistically level 8; the Gauntlets of Swift Action and Ring of Overseeing at both random loot so it's a bit down to luck, but you could get them fairly early; Sanguine Plate is from a quest in Defiance Bay that I missed in my first few playthroughs, but could be done at level 5 or 6; and Shod-in-Faith is bought from the Dwarf Smith in the Crucible Knight HQ once you've done their first quest (always do the first quest for all factions before doing the second for any of them). That's all the (!) marked items. Getting the second weapon will take longer, since Vent Pick is WM2 and you don't want to Helwax duplicate Bittercut until you've managed to make it Legendary (which requires an ingredient from WM2), but you can certainly substitute another stiletto or sabre and the build will still work. The rest of the gear can be susbtituted for something similar or simply the best item you can currently find for that slot.

You can type the command "HelmetVisibility False" into the console to achieve this. It doesn't require the "iroll20s" command so doesn't disable achievements.

Do you start combat by using a ranged weapon, then switch to a melee weapon afterwards? If so, the particle effect applies to your ranged weapon and, when you switch, it sort of floats around your head (probably difficult to see on a Moon Godlike). More precisely, the particle effect only seems to apply to the weapon you have equipped when combat starts. I don't know if this is intended behaviour or not. I noticed it in my current playthrough as a Cipher but can't remember whether it was the case in previous playthroughs.

As a dyed in the wool Murder Hobo, it goes against everything I believe in, but strangely it is the case

The majority of experience in PoE comes from completing quests, not killing enemies, so it's all about finding ways of completing quests without having to do much combat. For example, there's no quest that requires you to fight the Forest Lurkers in the Black Meadow, or even most the Trolls, so you can skip them till later. Also there's a way to complete the stolen cargo quest for the Gilded Vale smith without aggroing the bandits (and since they are all kith you get 0 experience for killing them anyway). As I understand it, there's a standard path in solo PotD for minimising the number of fights you have to get to Maerwald. I believe you can basically do it with just one fight against spirits (the ones in the Throne Room) and for that you spam scrolls of Fan of Flames to burn them down asap. For Maewald himself, I believe the trick is to pull him into other groups of monsters on the first floor of the Endless Paths as they'll fight each other. Once you've killed Maerwald you open up all the Act II maps and the extra experience they provide (in particular Defiance Bay has a load of higher xp quests that require little or no combat). As with everything that seems odd in Eora, you can explain it away with "souls did it". In the case of undead, all undead are vessels, which are simply souls which have been attached permanently to physical objects, but which aren't truly alive. Whilst spells like Whispers of Treason and Puppetmaster sound like they're all about mind control, remember that Ciphers are actually masters of manipulating an enemy's soul. As such those spells are simply the Cipher hijacking the soul of the vessel and taking control of it.

By the way, at the moment I think the way you've written the speed multipliers is wrong. You've written them all as 1.x, but in your speed_coeff calculation you sum them up and only subtract 1 once. This means, for example, for Zahua with his anitlei bonus, a single durganised sword and a DAoM potion, the speed_coeff formula is speed_coeff = (1.1 + 1.5 + 1.15) - 1 = 2.75, which results in 0 recovery, but it should be 1.75. I think either you'd want to change all the speed multipliers to 0.x, or you'd want to change your ORANGE and BLUE coef formulae to something like ((coef_1 - 1) + (coef_2 - 1) + ... + (coef_n - 1)) and ((coef_1 - 1) * (coef_2 - 1) * ... * (coef_n - 1)) respectively.

At the moment, if I'm reading it correctly, your formula seems to work like this for recovery (BaseRecovery and ModifiedRecovery introduced by me): BaseRecovery = 5/3 * AttackPhaseDuration, ModifiedRecovery = (1 - speed_coeff) * BaseRecovery [with a floor of 0], RecoveryPhaseDuration = 1/2 * ModifiedRecovery if dual wielding or ModifiedRecovery otherwise. This implies that the bonus from dual wielding is multipicative rather than additive, going against what the current understanding is i.e. that dual wielding is a 0.5 contribution to the speed_coeff. That's not to say that you're wrong, it's quite possible (even likely) that the current understanding has been wrong. As I understand it, the current (possibly wrong) formula works as follows: BaseRecovery = 2 * AttackPhaseDuration, RecoveryPhaseDuration = (0.5 - speed_coeff) * BaseRecovery if dual wielding or (1 - speed_coeff) * BaseRecovery otherwise. The 2 instead of the 5/3 comes from the (possibly wrong) fact that wielding a single fast weapon with no Dexterity of attack speed bonuses resulted in a 20/40 frames attack/recovery animation, and for a normal or two-handed weapon it's 30/60 frames. This might be wrong though, I've no idea if these values were ever tested carefully. The main difference is that the bonus for dual wielding (or penalty for not dual wielding) is applied additively to the speed multiplier rather than separately multiplicatively. Actually, given what you've said about dual wielding not providing a bonus but rather non-dual wielding being a penalty, perhaps that formula is better written as: BaseRecovery = AttackPhaseDuration, RecoveryPhaseDuration = (1 - 2 * speed_coeff) * BaseRecovery if dual wielding or (2 - 2 * speed_coeff) * BaseRecovery otherwise. To compare the two formulae take a Dex 10 naked character with no abilities, talents or items that give +attack speed. Have him drink a potion of DAoM and attack a companion using first a single sword, then dual swords. Under Max's formula you would expect a recovery of 0.83s and 0.42s respectively, whilst under the current formula you would expect recoveries of 1s and 0 respectively, so it should be fairly easy to rule one or the other out. Kudos on the amount of work put into this. What software would someone need to decompile the code?

If you're a Boreal Dwarf it's not hard to land on Ogre Druids thanks to the +15 accuracy versus Wilder (I was reliably landing Whispers with Boreal Dwarf Cipher at level 4 against the Ogres in the Endless Paths); you'll also be pretty likely to crit charm regular ogres too. I imagine that, given the way Boeroer build Ploi (high accuracy for charming), the same should be true with him i.e. it should be fairly easy to charm Ogre Druids.

Personally, I find it strange that someone who's considering completely vetoing the sequel over these issues has completed the game multiple times.

Yeah, dichotomy and duality are not dissimilar words.

They're incredibly useful for solo play as well.

Indeed, it looks like Max's formulas suggest that the effect of dual wielding is to half recovery after all other recovery modifiers have been applied rather than to add a 0.5 to the recovery modifier. For example, previously I thought dual wielding and drinking a DAoM potion would result in 0 recovery, but according to Max's formula, it actually results in a recovery of 0.25*attack speed. Out of interest Max, how did you get the formulas? Were they obtained through testing or did you find them in the game code?

That's actually my problem with Drawn in Spring generally. There are relatively few classes that I don't think look silly using a dagger as their main weapon, and at least one of those classes (the Rogue) I don't enjoy.

Oh, I didn't expect that to be the case. If it is then Tidefall will definitely draw ahead.