Thoughts on my first turn-based playthrough

[Lamppost in Winter]

Started my first proper go at playing the game in turn-based mode (had one previous attempt but it was kind of a gimmick run and I didn't get very far) and have some thoughts on it. For context I'm playing on Veteran with the Community Patch Bugfixes and Keywords packages, as well as one file from the Extras package to buff Wrath of the Five Suns. Only god challenge enabled is Rymrgand's. Right now I'm at level 15 and just defeated Concelhaut and the first encounter with Neriscyrlas.

Overall, enjoying it very much. Even as a RTWP defender and someone who already likes Deadfire's combat a lot, I feel like it would be hard for me to go back to the RTWP mode now. Combat feels way less fiddly, it's much easier to pay attention to certain mechanics when everything is happening one turn at a time, and there are some fun strategies that are much harder to pull off in RTWP. The only reason I could see going back to RTWP mode now is if I wanted to use a speed-based build like a Streetfighter. It's also highlighting how much of an improvement Deadfire made in encounter design - I never get the PoE1 feeling where I'm slogging through samey combats every few minutes. Instead, it feels more like Divinity Original Sin II where fights are less frequent and more of an event each time.

I'm playing on Veteran since I wasn't sure I'd be able to tackle POTD in this new game mode, and that fights would take way too long, and it seems to have been a good choice. I am finding that most fights are quite easy - seriously challenging encounters outside of big boss fights are not very frequent, but happen just often enough for my taste. I am wondering if the relative easiness is due to the expanded Graze range meaning most attacks land reliably, the AI and enemies being built for RTWP, or if it's just me already being familiar with the combat - which isn't really that different from the regular combat, just in a different format. I reckon shrinking the Graze range back some (maybe 15-49) while reducing all health by 25% might bring back some of the vanilla balance without making fights take too long.

One thing I am finding I differ on from the consensus is the value of speed. I am definitely valuing speed effects less and mostly leaving weapon modals that add recovery time switched on, but I find that having my casters wear light armour and having decent Dex scores is still very valuable. Tekehu usually goes first in every fight and can paralyse a ton of enemies right off the bat, which is just a free round, and if the rest of the party can take their turns before the enemies' that means they can make better use of that paralysis. My fight with Neriscyrlas also relied a lot on Xoti, Aloth and Ydwin going first so Ydwin could buff Xoti and Aloth with Brilliant, which Xoti could then extend indefinitely so that Aloth could spam Gaze of the Adragan on Neriscyrlas, which meant she almost never got to take a turn. That all would've been much more difficult if she ever got to act before my party did.

Build-wise, I'm rolling an offense-focused Priest of Berath/Ghost Heart Ranger (17 MIG, 15 CON, 15 DEX, 14 INT, 10 PER, 7 RES, from memory). Far from a meta build, but I've found it fun and effective, and the flavour of Ghost Heart goes great with the Priest of Berath. I mainly use the Ranger side of things to get accuracy bonuses for spells and all the damage/defence bonuses for the ghost bear, but now I'm also enjoying the combination of Rot Skulls and Driving Flight - being able to chuck exploding skulls that bounce to an additional target while also spreading DoTs everywhere for the bear to exploit is great fun.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Lamppost in Winter

[masterty66]

I tried turn base once or twice. It is cool how much control you get in that mode, but I found that it took forever to resolve battles. If I'm not mistaken someone made a half health mod at some point but I've never tried that.

I've gotten good enough at scripting in Deadfire that I don't know that I'd ever go back to turnbased. Maybe I will give it another whirl at some point. I didn't hate it or anything, but I just found the battles taking longer than I liked.

[Lamppost in Winter]

Some fights can definitely take quite a while, though not as bad as I feared. I was considering using the half health mod but I decided against it because I wanted to see how a mostly vanilla game felt in the turn-based mode, and I heard it introduces some real balance problems, like self-damage becoming much more severe or all healing becoming much more powerful. If I ever get around to doing another playthrough I might make a 75% health mod and get rid of the Veteran/POTD health modifiers. Making crowd control effects more severe could also help, e.g., bringing Paralyse's hit-to-crit back up to 50% or adding a Deflection penalty to it (which it should really have anyway).

Edited June 16, 2023 by Lamppost in Winter