Troubadour Summoner survivability (and equipment) issues?

[SirMirrorcoat]

No more questionaire for which class to pick xD

But I'm having serious issues keeping my Wurm-Summoner alive. The moment she gets sneezed at you can bet she goes down like a rock. 

I have 12 base constitution /15 base Resolve and wear medium/light armor (Aloth's Leather currently) and I use a medium shield rn. Rarely attacking, mostly summoning and sometimes healing. 

I canNOT afford any equipment anywhere. Every enemy I killed drops garbage items that barely get me any money, and buying 'fine' equipment seems counterintuitive, as I barely scrape by anyway. 

Level 6, tried to get through Old City, gave up quickly. Tried the narrows, same problem. Supposedly these areas are okay for my level??? No skull in the Journal.

 

Any advice is much appreciated

[Ranndar]

Solo or party? If solo, lvl 6 is low for this areas, try to get some more lvls doing no fight quests in Neketaka. My monk struggled to complete the old city in lvl 8, some fights I had to skip. 

[SirMirrorcoat]

Ah, yeah, didn't write difficulty or party comp, my bad!

POTD, upscale all

Me Troubadour

Tekehu Watershaper

Eder Swashbuckler

Xoti Priest

Serafen Witch

[Ouroboros226]

Very often, the issue is not your gear or strategy. But simply that you are in a way higher area than you are supposed to - like Ranndar pointed out. Also like I mentioned in another thread, bad positioning can make a moderately difficult encounter extremely hard, or an almost impossible encounter "only" difficult. So this is something you need to be aware of: NEVER judge the possibility of being able to do an encounter or not based on one single try. At least 3 tries to get a feel for if this is manageable or not.  

As an example. There is an observatory. When I first entered here, I got absolutely destroyed. I had my ass kicked so hard I could feel the foot in my mouth. Next attempt also failed, but it failed less. On the third attempt, it was a full turn. It was super-duper-easy. What did I change? Only the positioning of my characters. Pulling them down a hall. Having a trap there. Allowing me to enter combat with starting distance so I could pre-buff before **** hit the fan etc. The encounter which felt impossible was suddenly trivial. 

 

However... some places if you go there early. You simply have such a raw level and stat disadvantage that victory is impossible for all but the 0.01% of players. 

[thelee]

3 hours ago, SirMirrorcoat said:

Level 6, tried to get through Old City, gave up quickly. Tried the narrows, same problem. Supposedly these areas are okay for my level??? No skull in the Journal.

just for context, have you done much potd before?

even if something is "your level" it can still be brutally hard on potd, especialy at low-mid levels where you have fewer options and resources. i don't think i would attempt old city at level 6 - i wouldn't even attempt woedica's temple until like level 7 maybe. do some sanza exploration quests or smaller nekataka quests or bounties.

[SirMirrorcoat]

Okay, Imma do other stuff first then. The Gullet was just so intriguing with Tekehu, so I jumped down into Old City and into my doom right away xD

Did poe1 on PotD first full run, so I want to do that here as well. After doing Maje Island a dozen times of course...

Had to google who or what Sanza was. I wanted to buy his dog Kaleb so bad xD

[Ouroboros226]

39 minutes ago, SirMirrorcoat said:

Okay, Imma do other stuff first then. The Gullet was just so intriguing with Tekehu, so I jumped down into Old City and into my doom right away xD

Did poe1 on PotD first full run, so I want to do that here as well. After doing Maje Island a dozen times of course...

Had to google who or what Sanza was. I wanted to buy his dog Kaleb so bad xD

I highly recommend playing through the game on Veteran first, for your own sanity  You'll enjoy the game more and learn everything instead of being frustrated at every turn.

[SirMirrorcoat]

18 minutes ago, Ouroboros226 said:

I highly recommend playing through the game on Veteran first, for your own sanity  You'll enjoy the game more and learn everything instead of being frustrated at every turn.

Haha, I will not do that xD PotD or buts for me 

Upscaled all as well >:)

[Ouroboros226]

42 minutes ago, SirMirrorcoat said:

Haha, I will not do that xD PotD or buts for me 

Upscaled all as well >:)

When that's done. PoTD, Expert, Iron triple crown challenge? Seems I have a fellow masochist here.

[thelee]

5 hours ago, SirMirrorcoat said:

Did poe1 on PotD first full run, so I want to do that here as well. After doing Maje Island a dozen times of course...

oh yeah, i would easily put potd on deadfire as much harder than poe1. at release, deadfire was probably comparable, even a bit easier, but they definitely ramped up the difficulty quite a bit.

 

another low/mid-level example - if you do the hanging sepulchers or (non-passive) family pride as soon as they're no longer skulled in your journal, you will probably get absolutely wrecked unless you're super optimized or doing some metagaming cheese. once you get to like level 8 or so, the difficulty curve starts slowing down, at least until you get to some of the DLC parts.

[SirMirrorcoat]

Huh, interesting. All I read was that deadfire is significantly easier than dyrwood. Good to know that I will have a bigger challenge than in poe1

[Boeroer]

It used to be too easy at release so they tuned it up several notches afterwards.

 

[SirMirrorcoat]

Good thing

[mjo2138]

On 9/13/2021 at 10:12 AM, SirMirrorcoat said:

No more questionaire for which class to pick xD

But I'm having serious issues keeping my Wurm-Summoner alive. The moment she gets sneezed at you can bet she goes down like a rock. 

I have 12 base constitution /15 base Resolve and wear medium/light armor (Aloth's Leather currently) and I use a medium shield rn. Rarely attacking, mostly summoning and sometimes healing. 

I canNOT afford any equipment anywhere. Every enemy I killed drops garbage items that barely get me any money, and buying 'fine' equipment seems counterintuitive, as I barely scrape by anyway. 

Level 6, tried to get through Old City, gave up quickly. Tried the narrows, same problem. Supposedly these areas are okay for my level??? No skull in the Journal.

 

Any advice is much appreciated

Make sure you are using armor reduction boosting skills , even food that does it too. For example, druid has some good AR boosting skills, and so does chanter (but you cannot cast it on yourself, I believe) . If you have a druid and a chanter, you can get excellent AR bonuses early game even, and it only gets better as you progress. 

Get the really good equipment quickly, and you will stay alive longer - Devil of Caroc Breastplate in Nekataka, and the Painted Plate in Crookspur's merchant camp, bot have really high AR. Also, make sure the damage type mobs are using is not the 'weak spot' for your armor. For example, some armors have high AR against slash, but not pierce. 

 

find a Blunting Belt early on (random loot) and the Dragon's Pendant (rare loot in shipwrecks / burial sites) 

[thelee]

55 minutes ago, mjo2138 said:

If you have a druid and a chanter, you can get excellent AR bonuses early game even, and it only gets better as you progress. 

yeah at low levels, druid->pierce/burn/shock. chanter->slash (don't care about the redundant ones). combined with armor that favors blunt AR, you can cover any weaknesses and the difference between having both buffs and not is a major difference in survivability on potd i find. on early-mid potd, you pretty much need those buffs to have any effect at all, because the numbers involved need to be high to deal with early game enemy difficulty scaling on PEN when you have few options and weak items. +1 AR from upgraded pally aura or +2 AR from hardy/robust may do literally nothing for everyone at the early stages, but going up to +4 can be the critical difference in getting down to -50% damage reduction (and druid gets you up to +6).

 

eventually chanter can upgrade and cover pierce/slash/burn/shock on their own, but druid still picks up a few other ones later on (mostly elemental).

Edited September 14, 2021 by thelee

[Ouroboros226]

9 hours ago, Boeroer said:

It used to be too easy at release so they tuned it up several notches afterwards.

 

I'm still on a going triple crown run with my chanter. lvl12 atm. I have to say though... I sincerely think, that summons needs a nerf somehow. Something like, only 2 party members can have summons creatures present at a time. IMO - I think playing TC as a party is fun, balanced and an actual challenge (without using super-meta exploits). But I've noticed that having 2 chanters who summons creatures as well as a bunch of figurines, really does trivialize the game imo.   

  

Seeing how you have 4k+ hours into this game, would you agree with this? What would you do Boeroer if Obsidian hired you as a POE2:Deadfire game balancing dev? Just hypothetically ofc.

[SirMirrorcoat]

52 minutes ago, Ouroboros226 said:

 

Seeing how you have 4k+ hours into this game, would you agree with this? What would you do Boeroer if Obsidian hired you as a POE2:Deadfire game balancing dev? Just hypothetically ofc.

I think you need to @Boeroer if you want to ask him specifically

[Ouroboros226]

3 minutes ago, SirMirrorcoat said:

I think you need to @Boeroer if you want to ask him specifically

Like this? @Boeroer I SUMMON THEE TO THIS PLACE! LET THE SHADOWS PART AND BLESS US WITH YOUR FACE!

Now to see if this unholy ritual works.

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Ouroboros226 said:

But I've noticed that having 2 chanters who summons creatures as well as a bunch of figurines, really does trivialize the game imo.   

figurines eventually run out.

two chanters... well,

[Boeroer]

Summons and Mind Control (charm/dominate which is basically like getting a summon while taking away an enemy) are very impactful - especially if your ressources are basically endless and you can recast that stuff over and over again. 

Summons/controlled enemies take heat away from you, help control the battlefield and also can deal damage.

I have no brilliant idea how I would change them in order to make them more balanced. In this case I think there's a fine line between "feels too good" and "feels boring/useless". 

Edited September 14, 2021 by Boeroer

[SirMirrorcoat]

On a completely unrelated note...

Is there really no unique random loot in Deadfire aside from the Dragon Pendant? That would really surprise me...

[Boeroer]

I think the Dragon Pendant is indeed the only equippable item with enchantments that's random loot. 

Never thought about it - but now I tried to remember some other such items but couldn't come up with anything.

 

 

[Boeroer]

I just remembered Cloak of the Theocrat as random (sort of unique) loot.

Edited September 15, 2021 by Boeroer

[SirMirrorcoat]

I just got a Trollhide Belt from a burial site, so, random 'unique' loot exists, there is just no list... 

Maybe noone bothered making it because the items are less hard to get otherwies? 

[dgray62]

I think that the Dragon Pendant and Cloak of the Theocrat are the only unique items that you can only find by searching loot sites on the world map. You can also find other items like the Trollhide Belt, but those items are also available from stores, pick pocketing and dropped loot from kills. Cloak of the Theocrat is a great early game item if you can find it, since it gives +1 to INT and RES. It is attainable by saving before searching and reloading (ad infinitum) if you have the patience for this. You can also get the spyglass from these sites, although that's not unique, since you can buy one in Neketaka.