Adra ban, where I can find extra of them?

[Boeroer]

3 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

Yea, but that doesn't really work in video games. [...]

Stuff like this doesn't weigh on your mind.

Neither me nor Josh meant that it weighs on your (the player's) mind - but that it should weigh on your character's. If it would weigh on the player's then nobody would do an evil playthrough, right?
In real life I'm pretty sure you would think twice or thrice before throwing a friend under the bus (literally) for gaining some material benefit. I mean if one's somewhat decent and not a complete psychopath.

That situation should be reflected in the game. If you want those benefits you have to make a hard choice (hard if your character isn't an evil one). It's a role playing game - so it should matter for your character. If you really try to play that role and not only do a powergaming playthrough (which is also fine but then you don't need the diplomatic option anyway - you'll do whathever gives you the highst reward no matter what).

[AeonsLegend]

4 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Neither me nor Josh meant that it weighs on your (the player's) mind - but that it should weigh on your character's. If it would weigh on the player's then nobody would do an evil playthrough, right?
In real life I'm pretty sure you would think twice or thrice before throwing a friend under the bus (literally) for gaining some material benefit. I mean if one's somewhat decent and not a complete psychopath.

That situation should be reflected in the game. If you want those benefits you have to make a hard choice (hard if your character isn't an evil one). It's a role playing game - so it should matter for your character. If you really try to play that role and not only do a powergaming playthrough (which is also fine but then you don't need the diplomatic option anyway - you'll do whathever gives you the highst reward no matter what).

Well that goes for my first and maybe my second PT. I obviously didn't sacrifice anyone then. After that it doesn't really matter to me. In real life I wouldn't have killed Durance. Although he might have ended up in the hospital. To me Durance is an expendable character so I can sacrifice him and I have done so almost all the times. It's actually kind of rewarding seeing him suffer and then as he understands he's going to die and there's nothing he can do about it my PC does a little victory lap around the blood pool. Also the DLC characters never stuck to me so if I want Might I sacrifice Maneha. I can always blame Thaos.

[Boeroer]

Ok, you do you and that's fine. But that's completely missing the point I was trying to make: explaining why Obsidian chooses to be "measly" with rewards if you pick the benevolent route sometimes. They want to reflect real world situations where asocial douchebags get a bigger piece of the cake sometimes - but then have to live with the fact that they are asocial douchebags.   

I personally try to play a role even in the n-th's playthrough or else it's boring for me. But that doesn't matter for Obsidian's decision-making process I'm sure. 

Edited March 27, 2020 by Boeroer

[AeonsLegend]

8 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Ok, you do you and that's fine. But that's completely missing the point I was trying to make: explaining why Obsidian chooses to be "measly" with rewards if you pick the benevolent route sometimes. They want to reflect real world situations where asocial douchebags get a bigger piece of the cake sometimes - but then have to live with the fact that they are asocial douchebags.   

I personally try to play a role even in the n-th's playthrough or else it's boring for me. But that doesn't matter for Obsidian's decision-making process I'm sure. 

Yea I get it, except that those people never feel that way in real life. You can't make the assumption that everyone has a similar conscience or has similar social context.

[Boeroer]

Well, I don't...?

[AeonsLegend]

1 minute ago, Boeroer said:

Well, I don't...?

Well see (at the danger I'm pulling it out of context) this part: "but then have to live with the fact that they are asocial douchebags" assumes they would feel that way. Which they don't. People that kill other people aren't necessarily douchebags and karma isn't a thing in real life. If you make the choice to sacrifice a friend, then you may be a psychopath. Which in turn makes it so you are detached from this in the first place. You wouldn't feel bad about it and you certainly wouldn't be a douchebag. Not even asocial as psychopaths mimic social interactions better than anyone and often have high charisma to boot. Having to "live with it" assumes it weighs on your conscience. This would apply only if it mattered to you. That's what I'm saying. From the line above it appears that Obsidian views the choices from only their own perspective because it would matter to them. I'm pretty sure no one at Obsidian would have guessed that in my PT's Durance would have died consistently after uttering "Saw you in the flames".

[Boeroer]

I'll leave it here then...

[thelee]

14 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

Stuff like this doesn't weigh on your mind. Even when in POE2 your soul starts talking to you about this I don't give a rats ass. It doesn't weigh on your mind, because it's a game and it's not real.

I mean, not to put a fine a point on it, but all you're saying is that it doesn't matter to you, when several other players are saying it does.

I can say that I like to min-max a lot, and even then it still "weighs on my mind" about good or bad choices, vis a vis my character concept. And from watching more "normal" people play games likes Fallout, a lot of people make these decisions as well (i'll bet the cannibalism F:NV perk is one of the least picked perk).

 

Plus I think it's more philosophical a choice than a gameplay feature. Is it really a "good" choice if people are motivated by material rewards instead of the moral rightness of it? Whether or not good outcomes got rewards or not has the same gameplay pitfalls either way - either it doesn't matter for some people that being bad is bad, or it doesn't matter for some people that being good is good, they just want the extra goodies they get from choosing a dialogue option. It's always bugged me as a fan of role playing games (and role-playing-adjacent games) that "good" choices were frequently much better than "bad" choices, which basically upends the whole moral system entirely - people are bad because they are incentivized to be bad. One of my major disappointments in this in modern gaming is Bioshock, because if you did the math and you always saved the little sisters, the amount of ADAM you give up ended up being quite minor, and you got a lot of extra rewards in the process (in particular some unique plasmids/tonics unobtainable by evil people)--so much for the "moral choice" aspect of it; just be good because you end up richer, not because it's "good" for goodness' sake.

Edited March 27, 2020 by thelee

[AeonsLegend]

I think this is the split where people see themsevles as the main character vs people that don't. I am one of the latter.

[thelee]

2 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

I think this is the split where people see themsevles as the main character vs people that don't. I am one of the latter.

I'm not even really talking about that.

To rewind to a more relevant example - in BG1/2 there's basically no reason to be evil. You get a crapton of downside (bounty hunters especially), unable to get some quests, good and neutral characters leave your party, you get worse rewards, and vendor items are way more expensive. If you are good, you get a lot of upside - and you even get some of the upside of being evil at times--you can still recruit evil characters and they are easier to juggle into your party than good characters in an evil party, not to mention neutral characters are much more willing to stick around with a rep 20 than a rep 1 character. it was so stark that you really wanted to play good regardless of anything else; you could still pick an evil alignment in the early game (if your subclass or mainchar abilities required it) and just play like a good character.

what i like are "interesting choices." i don't see myself in my characters - i talked about character concepts. if it's so patently one-sided to do one sort of alignment than another, then it's not an interesting choice--and it undermines a game's brag about letting you role play or make interesting narrative decisions. i think at best, good and evil are just different axes of possibly multiple types of outcomes, and you can make "interesting" decisions about them, and it's not obvious to min-max a way through that. in this respect I think Tyranny does better than PoE or Deadfire, since factional reputation and ally reputation unlocks different abilities, and they are generally balanced enough that there's no "correct" answer, just different styles, so you have interesting decisions to make that intertwine role-playing and min-maxing. but from a philosophical perspective and the way most "normal" people want to play, I think JESawyer's stance of "goodness is its own reward" is an interesting one, more interesting than the typical "good is almost always the strictly best outcome" that game designers seem so eager to reinforce.

Edited March 28, 2020 by thelee

[AeonsLegend]

I think the corona crisis will test just how far Josh' gullible statement can go. Trust, me it won't be far.

At any rate with regards to role playing, since there's really no pros or cons in Deadfire to playing something "evil" or "good" it's basically all upto the player if he/she wants to implement it as part of their character. I never viewed the absorption of the souls through the Engwythan machine as evil. Sure the sacrifice of a companion is evil, but there's no repercussions to it if you do this in any shape or form. Like none of the party members question you about this. That would be the minimum I would expect, plus it would be an incredible way to deal with it in terms of RPing. POE decides that when you leave companions at the tavern that they will be forever oblivious to what happened.

I also dislike the reputation system in this, but also other games. Somehow when I kill a person with no one around to see it, it lowers my reputation. HOW does anyone know I did this?

[Boeroer]

Remarkable how something like "Why do I not get dragon bits if I convince the dragon?" turns into a hot take about human behaviour during the corona crisis.

 

[AeonsLegend]

I don't know. Someone brought up stingy rewards and then someone else started talking about good vs evil and Obsidians take on how this makes people feel. Which in my opinion is all based on the luxurious position we're all in. Benevolence or being good being a reward on its own works best if you have everything you need. Corona crisis will take that away from many countries so we'll see how long this benevolence lasts. My guess is that it won't be long before people start killing eachother to get what they want.

Edited March 28, 2020 by AeonsLegend

[thelee]

5 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

I don't know. Someone brought up stingy rewards and then someone else started talking about good vs evil and Obsidians take on how this makes people feel. Which in my opinion is all based on the luxurious position we're all in. Benevolence or being good being a reward on its own works best if you have everything you need. Corona crisis will take that away from many countries so we'll see how long this benevolence lasts. My guess is that it won't be long before people start killing eachother to get what they want.

this is basically what i've been saying - people are bad because they are incentivized to be bad. if the choice is between "join the looting of this store" vs "my children will starve to death" there's going to be a huge reason to go for the former.

but anyone who's studied a behavioral science field for a while will know that internalized social norms are powerful things. this is why you need that incentive to be bad - because most people have internalized "good" cultural norms and those weigh heavily on their choices. to wit - there's some joke i heard in grad school that the only people who know how to choose efficient outcomes in small social "games" are economics majors.

since we're talking about coronavirus, there's been a lot of talk about east asian cultural norms, chief among them a sort of deference to experts and authority figures. Which is a double-edged sword; yes, you get massive south korean population complying with government requests and health interventions, but it also means that when that horrible ferry ship sinking happened (which killed 480 people, 360 of which were young students) many people were just apparently quietly sitting around because the authorities [the ones bailing the ship] told them to sit around even with mounting evidence that they should bail as well. social norms ("good for goodness sake") can be powerful.

Edited March 28, 2020 by thelee

[fced]

On 3/27/2020 at 2:08 PM, Boeroer said:

Ok, you do you and that's fine. But that's completely missing the point I was trying to make: explaining why Obsidian chooses to be "measly" with rewards if you pick the benevolent route sometimes. They want to reflect real world situations where asocial douchebags get a bigger piece of the cake sometimes - but then have to live with the fact that they are asocial douchebags.   

I personally try to play a role even in the n-th's playthrough or else it's boring for me. But that doesn't matter for Obsidian's decision-making process I'm sure. 

not so measly, if you offer a saphir to Bekara when she had lost her mind in her prison, she reward you with an Adra Ban (also i found 3 other pieces of Adra ban in the rooms around) same area...

PS : Who is Josh ?

Edited March 31, 2020 by fced

[fced]

On 3/28/2020 at 10:32 AM, AeonsLegend said:

I think the corona crisis will test just how far Josh' gullible statement can go. Trust, me it won't be far.

At any rate with regards to role playing, since there's really no pros or cons in Deadfire to playing something "evil" or "good" it's basically all upto the player if he/she wants to implement it as part of their character. I never viewed the absorption of the souls through the Engwythan machine as evil. Sure the sacrifice of a companion is evil, but there's no repercussions to it if you do this in any shape or form. Like none of the party members question you about this. That would be the minimum I would expect, plus it would be an incredible way to deal with it in terms of RPing. POE decides that when you leave companions at the tavern that they will be forever oblivious to what happened.

I also dislike the reputation system in this, but also other games. Somehow when I kill a person with no one around to see it, it lowers my reputation. HOW does anyone know I did this?

Adra pillars are like a road for souls from here to the beyond, if i recall correctly souls were stuck in the machine (pillar is heart of the machine, like a hdd) so if absorbing the souls of the adra pillar is not evil, what would be evil ?? it is like eating thousand of peoples when you could eat cheese ^... I speak, but i done this also in one of my game...
 

Edited March 31, 2020 by fced

[AeonsLegend]

16 minutes ago, fced said:

Adra pillars are like a road for souls from here to the beyond, if i recall correctly souls were stuck in the machine (pillar is heart of the machine, like a hdd) so if absorbing the souls of the adra pillar is not evil, what would be evil ?? it is like eating thousand of peoples when you could eat cheese ^... I speak, but i done this also in one of my game...
 

But they are not alive. They are already dead. They normally go through the wheel and have their memories wiped. They are now part of another soul. Mine. I don't see the difference between absorbing them and putting them in a new body. I kind of found the +1 Might and +5% HP lackluster when comparing the amount of sould you absorb.

[Boeroer]

5 hours ago, fced said:

PS : Who is Josh ?

Joshua E. Sawyer, Obsidian's Design Director

[dgray62]

Going back to the original question, I think that Adra Ban occasionally shows up at locations where you randomly find gems. For example, I often find one hidden in one of the pilings at the end of a dock in the Undercroft area below Neketaka. Usually in that location I find either jade or Adra Ban. Needless to  say, I always hope for the latter.

[baldurs_gate_2]

23 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

Going back to the original question, I think that Adra Ban occasionally shows up at locations where you randomly find gems. For example, I often find one hidden in one of the pilings at the end of a dock in the Undercroft area below Neketaka. Usually in that location I find either jade or Adra Ban. Needless to  say, I always hope for the latter.

If you got all achievements and aint playing the ultimate you could just use the console. It's a different thing, when there are 10 adra ban in the game total or you can get 4 fixed and a random number of it, just through pure luck.

[Kaylon]

11 hours ago, baldurs_gate_2 said:

If you got all achievements and aint playing the ultimate you could just use the console. It's a different thing, when there are 10 adra ban in the game total or you can get 4 fixed and a random number of it, just through pure luck.

I think there are at least 6 fixed (without the ones in Ukaizo) and you can get more as random treasure or loot from enemies (grater sand blights, Belranga's spiderlings).  Belranga's spiderlings are unlimited but have a very small chance to drop adra ban (probably around 1%) so you have to kill hundreds of them (before they kill Belranga themselves...) - it's probably the best spot to farm adra bans with a specialized party if you want to play legit. If you only care about the achievements you can just save your game, enchant the item you want, equip it on a lvl1 hireling, export him, reload your game and import again the hireling with the enchanted item. 

[Boeroer]

Tehehe - I just wanted to write about the same trick.

I really like the export function since it allows you to use an item that otherwise would come too late to be worthwhile to build a character around. I mean without enabling cheats in the actual playthrough.

e.g. I made a fun little Barb focused on Vengeful Defeat who could get knocked out without injury thrice per encounter because I had two Rings of Reset (if you stack the used one with an unused one in the stash the empty one refills its charge). It's not OP and wouldn't be very viable without this little gimmick. 

Edited April 1, 2020 by Boeroer

[AeonsLegend]

Lol, I didn't even know about that. That's interesting. Well I wouldn't use that trick as I have Unity Console so you can basically do whatever you want. But I hardly ever add items I couldn't have otherwise. I mean some items DO come late. I managed to grab Magran's Favor at level 12, but it wasn't easy.

[Kaylon]

Another item I like to import is Violet Redemption which you won't be able to use otherwise... 

PS. Make sure you don't export items generated with the console because if you import them it's considered cheating too and achievements will be deactivated.

[AeonsLegend]

Adding items with Unity Console doesn't disable achievements though.