Unique items: enchantments a bit uninspired?

[Boeroer]

Hey,

I'm currently about to finish Emerald Stair and am having a lot of fun after a bumpy start with the game (motion sickness mostly ).

However: the more unique items I find the more disappointed I am when it comes to the enchantments of the unique items. I understand that adding a lot of fancy enchantments which would require additional visual and sound effects may have been out of the question due to cost -  but I could imagine several enchantments that wouldn't even require much investment and still be more interesting than most of the stuff I currently see in the game (and the wikis etc.). It's not that the stuff I see is bad - it's just that what those enchantments do is kind of similar or not very exciting. +x% (elemental) damage here, a bonus attribute point there... hm.

There are exceptions - for example the Ogre's great axe that can reflects projectiles (sweet) or the beetle shield that can summon a spirit beetle (awesome) - but they are either scarce or I didn't find them (yet?). When I look at my collection of unique items so far, I feel a bit disappointed (and I didn't even pick up the Disappointer, hohoho).

Having said that: I really like that some enchantments can be used to interact with the world outside of combat, too (burning brambles with a fiery sword, powering opening mechanics with electricity-infused shots from a pistol and so on). But also that shock + water does cool things in combat and things like that. That's neat. 

I understand that the variety of Deadfire's enchantments is maybe out of the question, but I believe the enchantments could be more interesting and exciting than they currently are - with not that much more investment. 

What do you think about that?

Edited February 27 by Boeroer

[Silvaren]

About motion sickness - this can be adjusted in game options: FOV, camera behavior in terms of shake and sway, but I guess you tried it.

I saw few paterns in enchantments. Some are using combo mechanics, like the fire dagger in Dawnshore, iirc after every 3 hits it deals fire damage in AoE. I found similar Axe in Emerald Stairs, but it was bursting poison damage. Different combo bonus has two handed sword from Dawnshore which triggers attack speed boost (15% with upgrade to 25% attack speed) - I'm using it currently until I will go to Emerald Stairs and pick stun + bleed accumulation 2h sword. There are some weapons against certain group of foes. Pre-final area of the game take some time to complete and contains huge amount of interesting unique items for endgame.

Accumulation mechanic is probably one of the most important feature in the game. I think I didn't utilize it enough playing as caster mage. I used Minoletta's Conduit (lighning wand) and it could accumulate shock on enemies, immobilizing them and bursting lightning arround them, damaging nearby creatures and electrifying water. There is Kalakoth's freezing wand too. This type of enchantment, the one that utilize accumulation mechanic can be very good and probably everyone underestimates it right now. It has potential not only to boost damage but put some CC on foes.

There are great gimmicks among enchantments, like arquebus with ricocheting bullets.
Some armors are pretty interesting, like Stelgaer's Pride triggering Barbaric Shout if player is hit for more than 30% max HP.

I found xaurip's gloves dealing some additional damage as fire and generating more stun with unarmed attacks. Unarmed combat is probably valuable choice, at least until endgame (there is no way to enchant unarmed strike to legendary iirc).

I found 4 or 5 items with summoning skills during my first playthrough. I found some item which grants me active ability similar to dragon's breath of fire.

I would say there is cool stuff hidden in game. I would prefer wider options, more alternative choices on gear, like in Deadfire. Right now we have two features on unique items and one of these features can be improved.

Edited February 27 by Silvaren

[Wormerine]

Aye, unique weapon enchantments tend to be pretty uninteresting. The biggest use for them I found so far are enviromental interactions during exploration. 

[Boeroer]

I have to say it got better one I reached the later stages of the game. There were some cool enchantments on uniques I found recently.